Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

MESSAGES FROM THE QUEEN

NIGERIA (GIFT OF A SPEAKER'S CHAIR)

The VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported Her Majesty's Answer to the Address, as follows:

I have received your Address praying that I will give directions for the presentation on behalf of your House of a Speaker's Chair to the House of Representatives of Nigeria, and assuring me that you will make good the expenses attending the same.

It gave me the greatest pleasure to learn that your House desires to make such a presentation and I will gladly give directions for carrying your proposal into effect.

INCOME TAX

The VICE-CHAMBERLAIN OF THE HOUSEHOLD reported Her Majesty's Answer to the Address, as follows:

I have received your Address praying that the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (South Africa) Order, 1962, be made in the form of the draft laid before your House.

I will comply with your request.

PRIVATE BUSINESS

NORTHAMPTON CORPORATION BILL

BRITISH TRANSPORT COMMISSION BILL

Lords Amendments considered and agreed to.

MANCHESTER SHIP CANAL BILL

Lords Amendment considered and agreed to.

KENT RIVER BOARD (HARBOUR OF RYE) BILL [Lords]

As amended, to be considered Tomorrow.

PRIVATE BILLS

Standing Order 208 (Notice of Consideration of Lords Amendments) suspended until the Summer Adjournment;

As regards Private Bills to be returned by the House of Lords with Amendments, such Amendments to be considered at the next sitting of the House after the day on which the Bills shall have been returned from the Lords;

When Amendments thereto are intended to be proposed by the Promoters, a copy of such Amendments to be deposited in the Private Bill Office, and Notice thereof given not later than the day before that on which the Amendments made by the House of Lords are proposed to be taken into consideration. —[The Chairman of Ways and Means.]

LEITH HARBOUR AND DOCKS ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL

Read the Third time and passed.

PETITION

Industrial Premises, Willesden

Mr. Pavitt: With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I beg leave to present a Petition on behalf of a number of residents in Manor Ward in my constituency, including my predecessor in this House, Mr. Samuel Viant.
The Petition showeth, That considerable nuisance and discomfort is given to residents in the vicinity of Furness Road, and danger of accidents to children attending the school in that road arises from the conduct of industrial premises, to wit, United Retaining Services dealing in cardboard waste materials, in this residential area. Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House will take steps to ensure that this industrial undertaking be removed as soon as possible and that the negotiations at present proceeding whereby alternative accommodation at Hounslow is to be used by this concern shall be speedily concluded.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.

To lie upon the Table.

ALIENS AND BRITISH PROTECTED PERSONS (NATURALISATION)

Address for Return
showing (1) Particulars of all Aliens and British Protected Persons to whom Certificates of Naturalisation have been issued and whose Oaths of Allegiance have, during the year ended the 31st day of December, 1961, been registered or recorded at the Home Office; and (2) Particulars of cases in which persons previously naturalised have been deprived of their citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies during the same period.—[Mr Fletcher-Cooke.]

Oral Answers to Questions — HOSPITALS

Dryburn Hospital, Durham

Mr. Grey: asked the Minister of Health if he will make a statement on the progress made in the building of the new operating theatre at Dryburn Hospital, Durham.

The Minister of Health (Mr. J. Enoch Powell): A Central Sterile Supply Department has now been added to this project. I hope to approve sketch plans shortly.

Mr. Grey: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the very serious conditions in Which the people are working in the Dryburn Hospital, and will he give an assurance that the work will be speeded up and completed within the next year or so?

Mr. Powell: Yes, Sir; I have visited the hospital. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, improvements were made to the existing theatres a year or two ago.

Out-patient and Casualty Departments (Capital Expenditure)

Mr. Boyden: asked the Minister of Health why the proportion of hospital capital expenditure on out-patient and casualty departments decreased during 1960–61 compared with the average capital expenditure of the years 1958 to 1961.

Mr. Powell: There is no significance in minor fluctuations in this percentage, which excludes departments in new hospitals.

Mr. Boyden: All the same, would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that many out-patient departments and casualty departments are out of date and inconvenient, and ought there not to be faster growth and improvement of these departments and some others?

Mr. Powell: Yes, Sir; I agree that the growth in out-patient work has been greater than that in hospital work at large, and there has been a great volume


of expenditure on it since the appointed day, but it is in the new hospitals that some of the biggest expenditure on new out-patients departments is taking place.

Mr. Boyden: In that case, could not the right hon. Gentleman alter his statistics so that the figures are more clearly shown?

Mr. Powell: I think the hon. Member is right, and I am looking at the question of the table in my Annual Report.

Drugs

Mr. Pavitt: asked the Minister of Health, why he will not advise hospital authorities that they may purchase drugs from firms which have made application under Section 41 of the Patents Act, 1949, for a compulsory licence to manufacture these drugs.

Mr. Powell: Because there is no licence unless the application is granted.

Mr. Pavitt: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Section 41 of the Patents Act was specifically meant to prevent monopoly? Is he also aware that his circular to hospitals on this subject in June led to considerable confusion? Is he not taking unto himself rights of decision in this case which should, rightly and properly, belong to the court?

Mr. Powell: Exactly the opposite. I am declining to do so.

Mr. K. Robinson: Will the right hon. Gentleman think again about this? Is he aware that Section 41 of the Act, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) has said, was specifically put in to protect the public interest, is being circumvented by patent holders through inordinate delays in hearing applications for compulsory licences? In these circumstances, would he not be perfectly justified in allowing hospital authorities to buy the drug the moment an application has been accepted by the Patents Court and published?

Mr. Powell: Certainly not. If I did that I should be doing just what the hon. Member for Willesden, West (Mr. Pavitt) deplored—taking the decision out of the hands of the proper authority.

Nurses (Pay)

Mrs. Castle: asked the Minister of Health what reply he has sent to the letter sent to him by the Blackburn branch of the Confederation of Health Service Employees forwarding a petition signed by nearly 200 nurses employed in Blackburn hospitals on the subject of nurses' pay.

Mr. Powell: I am sending the hon. Member a copy.

Mrs. Castle: As the Government themselves now admit that their incomes policy has been very unfair to people like nurses, will the Minister give the House a firm assurance that the award of the Industrial Court, when it is announced, will be honoured by the Government both immediately and in full?

Mr. Powell: That was given by my hon. Friend the then Financial Secretary in a debate earlier this Session.

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Minister of Health what progress has now been made in the negotiations in the Whitley Council regarding the nurses' salary claim; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Powell: The claim has been referred to arbitration. I understand the hearing is on 20th August.

Mr. Sorensen: When is the Report about this very important matter likely to be made, especially in view of the suspicion which still exists in the nursing profession?

Mr. Powell: I understand that the awards are usually issued shortly after the hearing.

Mr. Marsh: In view of the public interest in this matter, will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that the Government will accept the decision of the arbitration court?

Mr. Powell: I do not think that the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) was in the House when I pointed out earlier that that undertaking had been given by the Government in debate earlier this Session.

Admissions, Leicester

Sir B. Janner: asked the Minister of Health what is the average waiting time for people in need of operations at hospitals in Leicester; whether he is aware that in some instances the time is as long as six years, due to the shortage of nurses; and what steps he is taking to remedy the position.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. Bernard Braine): I know of no such instances. Average waiting time for non-urgent cases last March varied between 4 and 18 months according to the operation. Additional surgical beds and theatres are to be provided at both the General Hospital and the Royal Infirmary.

Sir B. Janner: Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that a petition has been presented in which the facts I have given today are referred to? If it is the case that people have had to wait for six years for operations, he will, I think, agree that this is shameful. How does he intend to improve the position even from the 18 months he is talking about?

Mr. Braine: I think there must be some slight misunderstanding. Two cases are known to have been on the waiting list for over six years, but in one case the operation was deferred for medical reasons while in the other it was delayed to suit the patient's own convenience. The waiting list for general surgery has been reduced from 3,183 at the end of 1961 to 2,592 at the end of last March. That is a reduction of nearly 20 per cent.

Hospitals, Nuneaton

Mr. Bowles: asked the Minister of Health whether he will arrange to visit the George Eliot, the Manor and Bramcote hospitals in Nuneaton.

Mr. Powell: I will bear this suggestion in mind.

Mr. Bowles: Does the right hon. Gentleman remember that I asked the Prime Minister not long ago to put the Minister of Health in the Cabinet? I have been successful, and I heartily congratulate the right hon. Gentleman. Perhaps he will now follow my suggestion and bring forward his visit to these hospitals.

Medical Research

Mr. Boyden: asked the Minister of Health, in view of the small amounts of money annually devoted to medical research by regional hospital boards, what plans he has for stimulating such local research.

Mr. Powell: The initiative here is with the boards.

Mr. Boyden: Surely the initiative could rest with the right hon. Gentleman if Exchequer funds were available. How can the right hon. Gentleman justify the fact that Manchester will spend £100,000 on local research while the East Anglia Regional Board will spend only £1,000? Surely Manchester's needs are not one hundred times as great as those of East Anglia.

Mr. Powell: The central responsibility for allocating funds for medical research lies with the Medical Research Council. These are projects which the regional boards themselves have put forward and which they want to do within their own systems and resources. The amount made available by the Exchequer for these purposes is increasing.

Prescriptions

Mr. Jay: asked the Minister of Health if he will amend the regulations so as to enable executive councils to exercise, in respect of hospital prescriptions dispensed by retail chemists, powers similar to those applying to prescriptions issued by general practitioners.

Mr. Powell: I have no power to do so.

Mr. Jay: As it appears that this distinction was originally accidental, does not the Minister think that there is a good case for taking this power?

Mr. Powell: The distinction is embodied in the structure of the National Health Service Act, and I am not aware that this gap, if it is one, is causing the problem, but if the right hon. Gentleman has a specific case about which he is anxious, I will gladly look at it.

Mr. Jay: Is the Minister aware that I have written to him about a specific case, out of which this question arose?

Mr. Powell: In that case, I will see that the right hon. Gentleman gets a reply.

Sir H. Linstead: May I ask my right hon. Friend if there is any reason for thinking that there is any difference in the skill and care shown in the dispensing of prescriptions written by hospital doctors in comparison with those of general practitioners?

Mr. Powell: None whatsoever. That is why I see no reason for amending legislation.

Coventry

Mr. Hocking: asked the Minister of Health what was the total number of hospital beds available in Coventry in August, 1939; and what is the number available today.

Mr. Powell: 1,108 and 811, with a further 324 beds outside the city which serve Coventry.

Mr. Hocking: Is my right hon. Friend aware that during this period, from 1939 to the present day, there have been an additional 100,000 people moving into the city? Could he provide some temporary accommodation to save the relatives having to go so far in order to visit their kith and kin in hospital, and save them these long journeys?

Mr. Powell: As my hon. Friend knows, the temporary replacement for the war-destroyed (hospital accommodation was, and indeed had to be, outside the city. The object now is to build a great new hospital inside the city, and I hope that early next year building will start on a new hospital with nearly 800 beds.

Mr. Hocking: asked the Minister of Health if he is aware of the demand and need for a diabetic clinic in Coventry; and what action he proposes to take with regard to this matter.

Mr. Powell: I am advised that adequate facilities for the treatment of diabetics are available in Coventry.

Land, Shrewsbury

Mr. Denis Howell: asked the Minister of Health what decision has been taken by the Shrewsbury Hospital Management Committee regarding the selling of land for the purposes of establishing a private nursing home; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Powell: I understand that they have referred the matter to the regional hospital board.

Mr. Howell: Is the Minister aware that I am concerned because on two occasions he has misled me and the House? In a debate on the hospital service, he said that I was inaccurate in my statement, and in a Question which I immediately put down he said that no proposal had been presented to him. Is he aware that this Committee decided on 25th May to sell hospital land for the purpose of establishing a private hospital to compete against the Health Service hospital, and now that the Minister has had leisure to repent, in his own words, will he finally apologise to the House and relent?

Mr. Powell: The hon. Member is still misinformed. No such decision has been taken by the hospital management committee, and both my statements to him, as well as this one. were accurate.

Mr. Howell: If no such decision has been taken by the hospital management committee, is the copy of the minutes which I have in my hand a complete fabrication? Will the Minister stop accusing other people of telling lies when hon. Members are trying to tell him all the time that they have information in their hands? Will he now make further inquiries and make a further statement correcting the matter?

Mr. Powell: I have inquired into this, and my information is that no such decision has been taken. Indeed, the decision could not be taken by the hospital management committee because I am the only person who can decide to sell hospital land.

Mr. Howell: On a point of order. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I will raise this matter on the Motion for the Adjournment.

Fazakerley Hospital, Liverpool

Mr. H. Wilson: asked the Minister of Health why the Fazakerley Hospital project, originally approved by his Department as due to begin in 1961–62, will not now begin until after 1965.

Mr. Powell: It was at no time approved for commencement in 1961–62. I expect building to start in 1964–65.

Mr. Wilson: Is the Minister aware that the local authorities were given the impression by his Department that it was due to start in 1961–62, and that in all the voluminous correspondence which I have had with his Department about this no reference was made by his Department to that decision? Is this what the right hon. Gentleman means by speeding up the hospital programme?

Mr. Powell: As there was no such decision, it would have been difficult to make reference to it in correspondence with the right hon. Gentleman. As he knows, this scheme has been considerably expanded, and the scheme which will now be started, and for which the plans are now in hand, will be a considerably more effective scheme than the one orginally envisaged.

Radiographers

Mrs. Slater: asked the Minister of Health how many hospital boards are now using radiographers from private contract firms.

Mr. Powell: Fifty-six.

Mrs. Slater: Does not the right hon. Gentleman agree that this steady increase in the number of hospitals using the services of radiographers employed by private contract firms is not something which he should encourage? Does not this practice cost the Ministry of Health twice or more than twice what the cost would be if the radiographers were employed by the National Health Service direct? Is not this practice a step in the wrong direction which will result in heavier costs to the Ministry than efforts to train and employ radiographers directly?

Mr. Powell: Many of these hospitals employ outside radiography only occasionally and many have not done so for some time. It could be a perfectly reasonable and economic procedure occasionally to resort to outside assistance

Mrs. Slater: Would the right hon. Gentleman be surprised to learn that I

know of a radiographer who was employed by a hospital and who replied to an advertisement by a contract firm, was employed by that firm and sent back to the job which she had just left, but at nearly twice the salary? Should not the Minister be inquiring into that sort of thing?

Mr. Powell: The number of radiographers in posts in the National Health Service is steadily increasing.

Consultants

Mr. Pavitt: asked the Minister of Health why a visiting consultant who rents a consulting room in the vicinity of a hospital for one day each week, but is giving three days' service, is not allowed a mileage allowance on the days when he has no consulting room.

Mr. Powell: Where a doctor is dissatisfied with the way the conditions for mileage allowance are applied to him, the regional appeal machinery is available.

Mr. Pavitt: Is it not nonsense that there should be differential treatment as between one consultant and another in this respect? If a regional board turns down a claim for mileage on the plea that the consulting room has a letter box, has not this reached the height of nonsense?

Mr. Powell: The regional appeal machinery can deal with it if that is the case.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF HEALTH

Silicosis, Staffordshire

Dr. Stross: asked the Minister of Health what was the average age at death from silicosis and silico-tuberculosis in pottery workers in North Staffordshire in the years 1932, 1942, and 1952, and at the latest available year.

Mr. Braine: Sixty-three in 1952, 64 in 1960, including deaths assigned to pneumoconiosis unspecified, and excluding deaths of persons over 75. I regret that figures are not available for earlier years.

Dr. Stross: But, assuming—I think it is a correct assumption—that in the


earlier years the figures ware very much lower, is it not fair to deduce that there has been a very steady improvement in this matter and that we owe it to the improvement in treatment by antibiotics and the drugs used against tuberculosis?

Mr. Braine: Yes, Sir; I am advised that there has been some improvement, especially among younger workers. Unhappily, the disease is prevalent in the pottery industry, but I am advised that working conditions in the industry today are such that they should not give rise to these diseases in the future.

Lung Cancer

Dr. Stross: asked the Minister of Health whether he has noted that the decennial report of occupational mortality by the Registrar General for the period 1949–53 shows that mortality from lung cancer in coal miners is appreciably lower than in men of the same age groups not associated with coal mining; and what are the medical reasons for this.

Mr. Braine: Yes, Sir. I am advised that the medical reasons are not established.

Dr. Stross: In view of the very exciting nature of this finding—namely, that coal miners are less prone, apparently, to sustained cancer of the lung than men of similar age groups in other industries—is it not desirable that the facts should now be completely established and the cause found by means of research? Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in north Staffordshire we are now able, as the result of the present founding of a medical institute, to initiate such work? Will he and his right hon. Friend give us whatever assistance we need, particularly at the end of the search, with a statistical evaluation through the efforts of the Medical Research Council?

Mr. Braine: I am advised that certain studies are proceeding into the question now in South Wales. I am sure that the institute to which the hon. Gentleman refers will be able to make a very valuable contribution to the maintenance of high medical standards in north Staffordshire. On the larger question of research into the relationship between

pneumoconiosis and lung cancer, the hon. Gentleman has written to my right hon. Friend, and I shall be arranging for a reply to be sent to him shortly.

Motor Cars (Personal Cases)

Mr. Godman Irvine: asked the Minister of Health when a decision may now be expected on the supply of a small Ministry car to Mr. Anthony Grant of 15 Fairfield, Herstmonceux, Sussex, first raised in a letter to him from the hon. Member for Rye of 14th June, 1961.

Mr. Braine: A car will be supplied.

Mr. Godman Irvine: Is my hon. Friend aware of the great satisfaction that this decision will give my constituent, who is 60 per cent. disabled and is paralysed? Can he say why it has taken so long to reach a conclusion?

Mr. Braine: The supply of motor cars to severely disabled war pensioners was announced in the House by my right hon. and learned Friend the former Minister of Health in April, 1960, when he indicated that it would take up to two years to review all cases. Mr. Grant's case has been one of a number of marginal cases, and I am glad that we have now been able to make a decision. Clearly, if we had not dealt with the many straightforward cases first it might have taken longer to complete the delivery of these vehicles.

Mr. Renton: asked the Minister of Health what decision he has reached about the allocation of a disabled person's car to Mr. A. Ruddy, of Great Staughton, a 100 per cent. disabled war pensioner, whose need for a small car was brought to his attention over a year ago.

Mr. Braine: A car will be provided.

Mr. Renton: Is my hon. Friend aware that this man is a severely disabled war pensioner who has waited for two years for this car, and could he say how soon he may expect to get it?

Mr. Braine: I think I have explained, in answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Rye (Mr. Godman Irvine), the reasons for the length of this delay, but my right hon. and learned Friend may be assured that


delivery will be made as soon as practicable, although I cannot say precisely when.

Mr. K. Robinson: Is the Minister aware that this is the second case of this kind which has been referred to at Question Time? Is he aware that I myself brought one to the Minister's notice not very long ago, in which there was a similar delay—considerably more than a year? Does he not think there is a case for speeding up the procedure generally in his Department?

Mr. Braine: There is a case, and my right hon. Friend is speeding it up.

Mentally Subnormal (Scott Report)

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Minister of Health what action he proposes to take to implement the report of the Scott Sub-Committee on the Training of Staff of Training Centres for the Mentally Subnormal.

Mr. Powell: I would refer the hon. Member to my reply of 4th July to the hon. Member for Middlesbrough, East (Mr. Bottomley).

Mr. Robinson: Is the Minister aware that this Report, apart from the somewhat discouraging preface, has been very well received? Since it suggests that we need more than 5,000 of these teachers, and we have at the moment fewer than 2,000, many of whom are untrained, will he go ahead with the setting up of a central training council, which is the essential first step to progress?

Mr. Powell: No, Sir. As I said in my answer to the hon. Gentleman's right hon. Friend, I really must first have the views of those concerned with this, and the matter must be maturely considered.

Dental Health (Iced Lollies)

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: asked the Minister of Health whether his attention has been drawn to the hazard to dental health resulting from iced lollies containing high concentrations of citric or tartaric acid; and what action be proposes to take in order to mitigate the risk to children's teeth.

Mr. Braine: My right hon. Friend is advised that iced lollies are not more dangerous to children's teeth than many other kinds of sweet.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: While thanking my hon. Friend for his reply, may I ask whether he is aware that it was to the high content of tartaric or citric acid in iced lollies rather than the iced lollies in general that I was referring in my Question? Further, is he aware that the dental authorities have drawn attention to the hazard of high concentrations of these acids? Will he, therefore, consider what action he should advise his right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to take?

Mr. Braine: I understand that it is quite true that acids can decalcify the teeth, and, if combined with sugar, can hasten decay. A good deal is being done by local health and education authorities to encourage good habits of oral hygiene among children, and the problem caused by acids in lollies and soft drinks is being examined now by my Department and by the major ice cream manufacturers' research laboratories.

Dr. Stross: Is the hon. Gentleman not aware that the hydrogen iron concentration in Coca-Cola is much higher than in iced lollies, and that there we have phosphoric acid plus sugar and the greatest danger comes from that source?

Mr. Speaker: We cannot go round all the acids and all the sweets.

Accidents, Nottingham (Burns and Scalds)

Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux: asked the Minister of Health how many accidents in the home and in places of employment, respectively, in the form of burns and scalds were notified to the health authorities in Nottingham during the past year from any convenient date.

Mr. Braine: No such notifications are made, but about half the burns and scalds treated in hospitals in Nottingham last year were due to accidents in the home.

Lieut.-Colonel Cordeaux: Would not my hon. Friend agree that the figures show that the number of such accidents


was far greater during the past year in Nottingham than in Derby? If that is so, why is Derby being given preference over Nottingham in the establishment of a burns unit? If my hon. Friend will not alter his decision in this respect, will he at least reconsider the recently expressed intention not to establish a burns unit in Nottingham for another ten years?

Mr. Braine: Higher priority is being given by the regional board to a burns unit at Darby because of the number of serious accidents in heavy industries there and because of the shortage of acute beds in Derby. Nottingham is better off for acute beds than any other area in the Sheffield Region, except for Sheffield itself, where many acute beds serve a wider area. I will gladly consider any evidence my hon. and gallant Friend can provide on the comparative urgency of the need for a burns unit in Nottingham rather than in Derby.

Prescription Charges

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Minister of Health if, in view of the twelve months' experience following the introduction of the 2s. prescription charge, which indicates a fall of nearly 14 per cent. in the number of prescriptions dispensed, he will now reduce the charge.

Mr. Powell: No, Sir.

Mr. Robinson: Would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that unless there was serious over-prescribing by doctors up to March, 1961, this fall, which is about seven times what he estimated, must mean one of two things—either that many patients are not getting the drugs they need or that there is greatly increased resort to self-medication, both of which are to be deplored? Will he think again about this matter and do something?

Mr. Powell: No, I do not agree. There is big fluctuation, in any case, from year to year in the number of prescriptions. If the three previous years are taken into account, the drop is only 6 per cent., which is fully accounted for by the elimination of prescriptions costing under 2s. and the very proper increase in prescriptions for longer periods.

Mr. Robinson: When we raised this matter earlier in the year, the right hon.

Gentleman said that he wanted twelve months' experience. Does he now want three years' experience? When that has expired, will he ask for seven years' experience?

Mr. Powell: No. But we must watch experience as we go along. There is no evidence that these charges are causing hardship or that anyone is not getting the medicine he should be getting.

Mrs. Braddock: Does the right hon. Gentleman make any inquiries about how many prescriptions are issued but not dispensed? Is there any record kept as between prescription and actual dispensation? I am informed that often, when patients see how much their prescriptions will cost, they do not go to the chemists and thus do not obtain the necessary medicine.

Mr. Powell: I would be glad to look at any specific case to which the hon. Lady can refer me. I do not, off hand, see how one could obtain figures for prescriptions made out but not taken to the chemists, but I will see if there is any way in which we can get a line on that.

Mr. Dugdale: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whom he has asked for evidence and what kind of evidence he has sought?

Mr. Powell: I have repeatedly said, in this House and elsewhere, that I will examine instances brought to my attention, from whatever quarter, where it appears, on the face of it, that these charges have prevented people from obtaining necessary medicines. I repeat that.

Drags

Mr. Wainwright: asked the Minister of Health what preparations he is making to ensure that, if Great Britain joins the Common Market, Continental drags which would not pass British pharmaceutical tests will not be put on sale in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Powell: None are necessary.

Mr. Wainwright: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that if we join the Common Market our chemists' shops may be flooded with cheap drugs in attractive packages? We have recently had a regrettable experience with the


drug thalidomide. Will he make certain that not only do we prevent the lowering of standards but that we increase our present standards?

Mr. Powell: The law and requirements apply equally to home and imported manufactured drugs.

Commander Kerans: asked the Minister of Health what estimate he has made of the number of malformed babies who have been born as a result of the use of the drug Distaval.

Mr. Powell: I am advised that there is no sound basis for any estimate at present.

Commander Kerans: Regardless of what the figures might be, surely the State has moral responsibility for these malformed children and should make some provision for new limbs and financial assistance, where necessary, in order to help them? This is man's mistake in society, and the State has the moral responsibility.

Mr. Powell: The appliances required by children born deformed are constantly being improved and every measure is being taken to see that they will be available to these children. There is a great deal that can be done in this way, and it should be widely known how much can be done.

Commander Kerans: asked the Minister of Health how many new drugs have been approved for the National Health Service in the last 10 years; and how many have subsequently had to be withdrawn as unsatisfactory.

Mr. Powell: There is no such procedure.

Commander Kerans: Whatever may be said of the past, surely now is the time to look into the hole question of the introduction of new drugs into the National Health Service or elsewhere. Will my right hon. Friend give me an assurance that he will, in conjunction with the Home Secretary, look thoroughly into the question of the provision of new drugs? I appreciate, however, that the pharmaceutical industry is doing a good job, that this is the first disaster that has occurred for some years and that the industry must put a good deal of money back into research.

Mr. Powell: I have already said that I am obtaining advice from my Standing Medical Advisory Committee on the testing of drugs generally.

Mr. K. Robinson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we are grateful to him for accepting a measure of responsibility in this way? How long does he expect the Committee to take, and will the report be published?

Mr. Powell: There is another question on that matter.

Mrs. Slater: Is it not time that sterner measures were taken to see that a drug is not put on the market until it has been efficiently tested? Is it not time that the Home Office and the Ministry of Health went into the whole question of testing drugs before they go on the market and before a disaster occurs? It is not good enough to have disasters first and then withdraw a drug after the damage has been done.

Mr. Powell: That is one of the questions at issue. Efficient testing of a new drug is a very difficult and complex concept.

Mr. Fletcher: asked the Minister of Health what steps he is taking in conjunction with the manufacturers of artificial limbs and by way of research to ensure that all possible help is given to minimise the handicaps which will be suffered by the children born deformed as a result of the use by their mothers of the drug thalidomide.

Mr. Powell: The Artificial Limb Research Centre is constantly experimenting and collecting information on new protheses for these and other types of limbless.

Mr. Fletcher: Will the Minister bear in mind that, as his hon. and gallant Friend the Member for The Hartlepools (Commander Kerans) said just now, there is very great concern about the future of these 500-odd deformed children who were born as the result of the use by their mothers of thalidomide? Is he aware that we are most anxious to ensure that all possible steps should be taken to alleviate the hardship which will inevitably be suffered?

Mr. Powell: Apart from the question of the figures, for which, as I have


already indicated, there is no adequate basis, I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman

Mr. Driberg: Is the Minister aware of the encouraging results of experiments carried out in two universities in Western Germany, in orthopaedic clinics there? Will he also deal with a particular aspect of this problem—that it is not only a question of fitting these appliances, but also of how the children are to be taken to the clinics where the appliances now are, as the children are scattered all over the country?

Mr. Powell: On the last point, steps have been taken to ensure that the importance of early contact with the limb-fitting clinic is well understood. I am aware of the experiments to which the hon. Gentleman has referred, and I would re-emphasise that there has been a tremendous advance in this subject and there is a great deal that can be done.

Mr. Driberg: asked the Minister of Health if he will introduce legislation to enable compensation to be paid out of public funds where appropriate or to require drug manufacturers to pay compensation when otherwise appropriate to the mothers of babies born deformed as the result of use of certain drugs.

Mr. Powell: No, Sir.

Mr. Driberg: Even though those tragic cases may be due in part to the laissez faire policy of the Minister— [HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—certainly, they are—has he any reason to suppose that the manufacturers or indeed the distributors of the drug would wish to profiteer out of deformity?

Mr. Powell: I hope that the hon. Member will repent at leisure over the terms of his supplementary question. It would not be right to extend the scope of the general law on compensation to cover cases of this kind, however deeply we may feel about them.

Sir B. Janner: asked the Minister of Health what steps he has taken to ascertain from the United States of America and other countries what is the result of their investigations in respect of the effects on health of thalidomide and other dangerous drugs, and the steps

being taken by them to check the use of dangerous drugs in the future and to deal with affected cases; and if he will make a statement on his proposals to benefit from such information.

Mr. Powell: I would refer the han. Member to my reply to his and other Questions on 23rd July.

Sir B. Janner: Could the Minister say whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that Dr. Frances Kelsey in the United States actually prevented the use of drugs of a similar nature to the one which caused all the trouble here? What possible excuse can there be, after such a prevention has taken place, for us not to know that that prevention took place? What kind of arrangements has the Minister with various countries concerned so that he should be made aware of the fact that a drug, after having been tested by a responsible person, is found to be wanting?

Mr. Powell: I have no doubt that the side effects of this drug, as soon as they were known in any country, were known here, and steps have been taken accordingly.

Sir B. Janner: Is not the Minister aware that that is a very unsatisfactory answer? Does not the Minister realise that in fact the sale of this drug was stopped because of the fact that it was discovered by Dr. Frances Kelsey to have this serious nature? Would he investigate and see what he can do to have the information made available whenever anything of that nature occurs?

Mr. Powell: The hon. Member is misinformed. I have told the House, and I repeat, that as soon as these side effects were known anywhere, they were known here and appropriate steps were taken here.

Mr. Edelman: Is it not the case that as long ago as 1960 it was observed that one of the toxic side-effects of thalidomide was the production of polyneuritis, and that reports were made to that effect in the medical journals? Is it not the case that action was not taken until November, 1961, to prohibit the sale of the drug?

Mr. Powell: Because the prohibition of the sale was due to the discovery of


other side effects, and not those to which the hon. Member refers, which are not uncommon.

Mr. Edelman: asked the Minister of Health what advice he has received from his standing Medical Advisory Committee on the question of the testing of new drugs generally; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Powell: I cannot expect to receive this for some time.

Mr. Edelman: Is not the matter urgent? Has not the Minister's attention been drawn to the comments of high medical authorities in universities all over the country, and also in private practice, who point out that certain new drugs are being administered, especially to pregnant women, which may have dangerous and toxic side-effects? Has his attention been further drawn to the suggestion that, pending the setting up of a statutory commission of the kind suggested, no further new drugs should be administered to pregnant women? Will the right hon. Gentleman make a statement on that?

Mr. Powell: This is a matter entirely within the discretion of medical practitioners, who will be exercising their responsibility in deciding what to pre-scribe in relation to the patient's condition.

Mr. K. Robinson: Will the right hon. Gentleman now answer the supplementary question which he deferred a little earlier—whether this report is to be published when he receives it?

Mr. Powell: It is normal for the advice which I receive from my Standing Medical Advisory Committee to be published. Indeed, its proceedings are published. It will not be available for some time yet.

Dentists, West Bromwich

Mr. Dugdale: asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware of the shortage of dentists in West Bromwich; and what proposals he has to meet it.

Mr. Powell: Yes, Sir. The number of dentists qualifying and of treatments given in the general dental service continues to rise rapidly.

Mr. Dugdale: Is the Minister aware that, according to my information, the number of dental practitioners is ten for a population of 80,000? Is he aware that those in authority have already described it as truly appalling?

Mr. Powell: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that the proportion of dentists to the population in West Bromwich is much lower than in most parts of the country. I have no power to direct dentists to particular areas, but the continuing and rapid increase both in the numbers of dentists and of treatment is bound to bring relief.

Abnormal Births

Mr. Edelman: asked the Minister of Health what were the numbers of abnormal births in 1960, 1961, and 1962, respectively; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Powell: This information is not available.

Mr. Edelman: Is it not a grave dereliction of duty on the part of the Minister that he did not take the lead in taking note of the steep rise in the number of abnormal births observed not only in this country but abroad? In those circumstances, does it not indicate that there are many obscure factors which should be cleared up in connection with the thalidomide tragedy? Will not the right hon. Gentleman therefore agree to set up a committee of inquiry, as requested by myself and a number of my hon. Friends, in order to probe this matter further and not to draw the veil over it?

Mr. Powell: I have no reason to doubt that the medical profession is actively studying all the ramifications of this matter. But the hon. Member asked about the numbers of abnormal births in three years, and as there is not even a definition of what is meant by an abnormal birth—nor can there be—I cannot give him the figures in reply.

Mr. Edelman: Is not the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that a child born without arms or legs constitutes an abnormal birth? As these births have been observed widely all over the country, does it not seem now that some further inquiry should be made in order to try to ascertain the facts, as is done in


the case of a railway accident when, if one or two people lose an arm or a leg, a statutory inquiry is held?

Mr. Powell: But the figures to answer this Question, even if they could be obtained, would not help on the problem which the hon. Gentleman has in mind.

Smallpox

Dr. D. Johnson: asked the Minister of Health (1) whether he is satisfied with the results of his campaign to increase the present rate of infant vaccination against smallpox; and if he will make a statement;
(2) to what extent, during his present propaganda campaign to maintain a high rate of infant vaccination, efforts are being made to develop alternative methods of immunisation against smallpox which provide the same degree of safety as with immunisation measures against other diseases.

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Minister of Health what progress is being made in the campaign for a high rate of infant vaccination against small pox; what consideration is being given to alternative methods of immunisation against smallpox which provide equal safety against the disease; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Powell: On 18th July I asked local health authorities to make comprehensive plans to raise the level of vaccination and immunisation generally. I understand that research into alternative protection against smallpox continues, but that so far none giving equal immunity has been found.

Dr. Johnson: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the pleasure which I feel, first, that my constituency is top of the league, so to speak, in this respect, and, secondly, that on this occasion he and I find ourselves in the same lobby, so to speak? Does he not consider it unreasonable that the B.M.A. apparently criticises his vaccination policy although the orthodox medical profession for a long time has been resistant to variations and suggested variations in this ancient method of vaccination which is still in vogue and has been practically unaltered since Jenner's day? Would he make this point in his dealings about it with the medical profession?

Mr. Powell: I have no doubt that investigation is being pushed ahead on this matter, but no practical application has yet been arrived at.

Mr. Sorensen: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that because of recent statements about the vaccination of infants there is a great deal of confusion on this subject, especially among parents? Can he do something to clarify the matter so that we may know where we are?

Mr. Powell: The hon. Gentleman will be reassured to know that in its handbook for this year the B.M.A. recommends routine vaccination in infancy and that this policy was re-endorsed by my Standing Medical Advisory Committee as recently as last year.

Mr. S. Silverman: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether it is still true that more people die from vaccination than from smallpox? If that is true, What inference does his Department draw from the fact?

Mr. Powell: It is not true in those terms.

Mr. Sorensen: Has anything been done to deal with the statements made by a high medical authority and contrary to that given to the British Medical Association?

Mr. Powell: I hope that my answer to the hon. Gentleman will put that matter in its right perspective.

Mr. Fletcher: In what terms is it true that more infants die as a result of vaccination than smallpox?

Mr. Powell: If the hon. Gentleman will put down a Question on the figures, I will give them.

Dentists

Mrs. Slater: asked the Minister of Health to what extent dentists are refusing to take adults on their lists under the National Health Service.

Mr. Powell: Dentists do not have lists of patients under the National Health Service.

Mrs. Slater: Does not the right hon. Gentleman know that there are people who, because they take their children


to a dentist, consider themselves to be on that dentist's list? Is he not aware that, because of the revised conditions, some dentists are saying that they will treat the children, but not the parents, the parents being those who are most likely to want to have teeth out and have new dentures fitted, which is the heaviest cost to them?

Mr. Powell: It has always been the case, since the inception of the general dental service, that dentists were free to accept or not to accept a particular patient for a particular treatment, and vice versa, but I will look at any case of difficulty which has come to the hon. Lady's attention.

Dental Treatment

Mr. Ridley: asked the Minister of Health what steps he has taken to ensure that piece-rate payment for dental treatment does not result in poor quality work.

Mr. Powell: My regional dental officers examine a sample of patients treated.

Mr. Ridley: Is my right hon. Friend aware that some people feel that the high salaries which some dentists receive are achieved at the expense of quality of work? Is he quite satisfied— and can he assure the public—that that is not so and that his machinery for checking that that is not the case is adequate?

Mr. Powell: This is a matter which is very much in the minds of my dental officers, whose duty it is to keep surveillance over the standard of dentistry in the general dental service.

Oral Answers to Questions — EMPLOYMENT

Resettlement Grants

Mr. Ridley: asked the Minister of Labour if he will take steps to provide resettlement grants to cover travelling, removal, out-of-pocket and family expenses for unemployed persons moving to new employment.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. William Whitelaw): Yes, Sir. This has already been done. Unemployed persons who

live in areas of relatively high unemployment are assisted under the Resettlement Transfer Scheme to take up work away from home. My right hon. Friend is arranging to extend these facilities to unemployed persons living elsewhere who cannot get suitable work in their home areas.

Mr. Ridley: May I congratulate my hon. Friend on emerging from his chrysalis of silence and also thank him for that reply? May I ask him whether he is aware that under the Common Market 50 per cent. of money spent on this sort of thing is recoverable from the Commission? Does not he think that it is time we had a full-blooded policy to encourage the mobility of labour now?

Mr. Whitelaw: I hope my hon. Friend will accept this and realise that At is a necessary and welcome step in the right direction.

Mr. Prentice: May I also congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his new appointment and ask him especially whether he will look at the publicity given to this grant, because the use made of the existing Ministry grant is very small and this could play a bigger part in the mobility of labour?

Mr. Whitelaw: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for what he said. I should point out that posters will be displayed in every employment exchange and the scheme will be brought to the notice of unemployed persons who are willing to consider jobs in other areas.

Clydebank and Kirkintilloch

Mr. Bence: asked the Minister of Labour what is the number of adult men and women registered as unemployed at the Clydebank and Kirkintilloch employment exchanges; and what steps he is taking to place these people in employment within reasonable travelling dis-ance of their homes.

Mr. Whitelaw: On 16th July, 1962, 1,007 men and 137 women were registered as unemployed at Clydebank and 194 men and 100 women at Kirkintilloch. Our local officers are doing all they can to find suitable employment for these workers.

Mr. Bence: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in Clydebank the Singer Sewing Machine Co. is in process of contracting its production in this factory, and, further, that the future of John Brown's shipyard is not too bright? In the burgh of Kirkintilloch, with its overspill agreement with Glasgow, insufficient industry is coming in and in the coming years the placing of young people will be extremely difficult. Will the hon. Gentleman impress on his right hon. and hon. Friends that the impetus of placing more industry in Scotland and of creating more jobs there will have to be speeded up much more than has been the case in the past ten years?

Mr. Whitelaw: The hon. Gentleman and I happen to have a close personal interest in the areas to which he referred, which might have been closer still but for his intervention at one stage. I fully accept what the hon. Gentleman says. I think that I should point out that the facilities of the Local Employment Act are available to both these places which are in the Glasgow travel-to-work area. I know that it is not a popular thing with some people to know what jobs are in prospect, but it is fair to say that there are about 4,600 jobs in prospect in this area. I do not wish to put it higher than that, but they are in prospect.

Mr. Bence: The problem will arise to a greater extent in Twechr, Condoratt and Cumbernauld. Also, in these areas men over 45 cannot get jobs, not even in Glasgow or anywhere else. Will the hon. Gentleman see to it that some industries are moved into this area to enable these men to get suitable employment?

Mr. Whitelaw: The hon. Gentleman and I are perhaps among the few who are able to refer to some of these places by their correct names. I fully appreciate what he says. We have to realise that there is the new town of Cumbernauld which the hon. Gentleman knows very well. New industries have been put there and considerable development is going on, but that does not detract from the difficulty in this area of which I and my right hon. Friends are fully aware.

Mr. Grimond: Can the hon. Gentleman tell us the difference between

"jobs in prospect" and "jobs in the pipeline "?

Mr. Whitelaw: I have often, from a different position, listened to the words "jobs in the pipeline". I realised that the House was getting rather tired of this, so I thought that it might like a new name, and "jobs in prospect" seemed very fair.

Ashington

Mr. Owen: asked the Minister of Labour what steps are being taken to deal with the increase in unemployment of young people in Ashington, Northumberland, which is 40 per cent. greater than in May, 1961; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. Whitelaw: At mid-July 28 boys and 33 girls were registered as unemployed at Ashington. Our local officers are making every effort to place them in suitable employment.

Mr. Owen: Is not the Minister concerned about the disturbing increase during the past year in the number of unemployed youths? We recognise the important service rendered by the local officers, but is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Industrial Training Council recently passed a resolution asking that note should be taken of this growing problem and suggesting that it could be resolved only by bringing new industries to this area?

Mr. Whitelaw: I accept what the hon. Gentleman says, but I think that it is fair to get the problem in its proper perspective. On 11th July there were 63 vacancies for boys and 4 for girls in the area. Most of the vacancies are in coal (mining, where prospects for boys remain good.

School Leavers, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Mr. Montgomery: asked the Minister of Labour whether he is aware of the concern felt in Newcastle-upon-Tyne over the difficulties of employment for school leavers; and what steps his Department is taking to remedy this situation.

Mr. Whitelaw: At mid-July all but 62 of the 1,209 Easter school leavers in the area had entered employment. The


Youth Employment Service is doing all it can to help the young people to find suitable employment.

Mr. Montgomery: While thanking my hon. Friend for that reply, may I ask whether he is fully aware that the new school leavers will now be on the labour market and that in the debate last week his right hon. Friend said that he was having talks with the unions to provide apprenticeships for the people about whom we are concerned here? Can my hon. Friend please say whether anything further has happened about this?

Mr. Whitelaw: Yes, Sir. As was announced in the debate on employment prospects in the North-East, my right hon. Friend has had some discussions on these matters which are being further considered. We welcome very much anything that is done to increase the number of apprenticeships in this area. It is good to know that there has been some success there. In the first six months of this year 43·2 per cent. of boys entering employment in the Newcastle area obtained apprenticeships compared with 34 per cent. in the country as a whole, so the North-East is doing pretty well.

Mr. Prentice: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the last two Questions, and some others which will probably not be reached, represent a considerable anxiety about school leavers this summer? Is he aware that this represents about 30 par cent. more school leavers than a year ago? As the economy as a whole is more sluggish, and manufacturers are expressing pessimism about their prospects, what are the Government, and the hon. Gentleman's Department in particular, doing to provide bigger scope of opportunity for this large number of school leavers?

Mr. Whitelaw: I welcome what the hon. Gentleman says, because it stresses the great importance of increasing the number of apprenticeships which can be offered by industry, particularly this year, when we have what is known as the bulge in school leavers upon us.

Wages

Mr. Warbey: asked the Minister of Labour what, in each quarter of 1961 and in the first two quarters of 1962,

was the percentage increase over the preceding quarter of the weekly wage rates of all workers.

Mr. Whitelaw: The percentage increases are 1·4, 0·9, 0·3, 0·7, 11 and 1·2, respectively.

Mr. Warbey: Do not those figures effectively dispose of the myth that the pay pause was rendered necessary by the abnormal increases in wage rates during the early part of last year?

Mr. Whitelaw: I do not think so. As has been explained, more than half of the increases in the period from July to April were due to increases from commitments entered into before 25th July. Furthermore, I know that the hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that the Index of Weekly Wage Rates rose by 23 per cent. in the six months preceding the pause, and, despite these extra commitments, by 2·2 per cent. in the nine months of the pause. It is therefore clear that it has not had a drastic impression on our costs and that we are therefore more competitive.

KENYA (TEACHERS)

Mr. G. M. Thomson: (by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what steps he is taking to maintain the employment of 2,000 Kenya teachers who are threatened with dismissal on Wednesday due to lack of public funds to pay their salaries.

The Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Duncan Sandys): I have asked the Governor for a report on thus matter.

Mr. Thomson: Will the Minister bear in mind the fact that this dismissal affects almost the entire teaching force in this area? Is he aware that there have been crop failures and floods in the area, and that these have led to financial difficulties? Will he intervene personally, in view of the importance of education in a territory like Kenya, to make sure that its financial difficulties are not solved by closing all the schools?

Mr. Sandys: I know as little about this matter as does the hon. Member. I understand that the decision in question was taken on Saturday night. I took


the first possible opportunity to ask for a report from the Governor. I understand that the financial difficulty arises from the fact that, in the expectation of independence, the inhabitants are refusing to pay their rates.

Mr. Healey: As we are now approaching the Recess, will the Secretary of State recognise that many hon. Members on both sides of the House are seriously concerned about the administrative and economic future of Kenya, unless Her Majesty's Government give more help than they are now giving? Is it not the case that the Government have reduced development aid by £1 million, and that the assistance given to agricultural settlement is largely at the expense of development aid? Will not the right hon. Gentleman have a serious look at the question immediately so that he can assure the House, before the Recess, that something is being done by Her Majesty's Government to ease the situation?

Mr. Sandys: That is a much wider question, than you, Mr. Speaker, would have allowed as a Private Notice Question, but on the issue which has been raised I think that since we have entrusted to the Government of Kenya wide powers of internal self-government it would be a grave mistake to try to intervene in the matter before they have had a chance to grapple with the problem.
I doubt whether they have even received a report from the area concerned: the decision was taken only on Saturday night. We must leave them to try to sort out their own affairs in the first place. It is a responsible Government that we have created in Kenya. If the situation should be found to require some assistance or intervention by Her Majesty's Government, that is a matter to consider quite soberly and quietly, when we have seen what the Government of Kenya will do and what the local authority, whose primarily responsibility it is, will do.
I understand that another meeting is to take place and that no dismissals will take place for, at any rate, one month, according to Press reports.

Mr. Wall: Can my right hon. Friend say whether the present talks which he

is having in London with Kenya Ministers cover all forms of economic aid, including education?

Mr. Sandys: The talks have not yet begun.

EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY(BRUSSELS NEGOTIATIONS)

The Lord Privy Seal (Mr. Edward Heath): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, and that of the House, I wish to make a statement on the progress of the Brussels negotiations.
A meeting of Ministers took place in Brussels from 24th to 28th July. At our first session on 24th July, we resumed discusssion of problems arising for British domestic agriculture. We considered the extent to which the Community's arrangements for two commodities—pigmeat and eggs—give producers an assurance of an adequate return.
Problems which would arise for these commodities during the transitional stage were also considered. Officials were instructed to continue their work on the basis of the ministerial discussion, and we will resume our discussion on both these products at a later meeting.
Ministers also had an initial discussion on the transitional arrangements for horticulture.
The major part of the meeting—from 25th to 28th July—was devoted to the problem of imports of foodstuffs, mainly cereals, meat and dairy products and sugar, from the Commonwealth. As I have already told the House, all seven Governments have agreed, in the context of an enlarged Community, to take an early initiative to secure long-term agreements on a broad international basis for the principal agricultural products.
At the same time, the members of the Community have accepted the importance of reaching an understanding on the purposes of such agreements and on the points to be covered in them. We also considered together the question of price and production policy in an enlarged Community, which would have a major influence on the volume of imports.
We discussed the position which would arise if these wide international agreements did not prove practicable. The Six Governments have stated their readiness to conclude agreements, with the same purposes, with those countries who wish to do so, in particular, the Commonwealth countries. The consideration of arrangements for the transitional period continued.
As the House knows, the problems which arise in this sector of foodstuffs are the most difficult in the negotiations. They are complicated by the fact that the Community's price policies are still in the course of development. We must seek to strike a balance between the interests of farmers in an enlarged Community, including our own, and the interests of traditional exporters, in particular, the Commonwealth. In so doing we must recognise that patterns of trade cannot and will not remain static, but that the arrangements reached must promise to work out fairly and must not damage the essential interests of those concerned.
In the intensive discussions that have taken place during the past week we have made some progress in each of the sectors I have just mentioned. We did not, however, reach agreement, and the discussions will be continued at a further ministerial meeting this week, beginning on Wednesday, 1st August.

Mr. H. Wilson: No hon. Member, by his questions this afternoon, will want to make the present situation more difficult than it has already become, and if I put one or two questions to the right hon. Gentleman for the purpose of obtaining information, will he understand that we shall understand if he has difficulties in giving all the information that we would like at this stage?
First, is the House right in assuming that on the question of the long-term position—the post-1970 position—of Commonwealth imports the Government and the Six have reached an agreement, and that that agreement involves not merely the abolition of preference, but, so to speak, the creation of reverse preference against the Commonwealth, and that there will be no physical guarantees for Commonwealth imports after 1970?
Secondly, are we to understand that the recent difficulties Which have occurred in the negotiations—I do not want to use a more dramatic phrase— related purely to the transitional arrangements between now and 1970, and related to the extent to which, and the speed at which, existing preferences and other guarantees are to be wound up by 1970? If the right hon. Gentleman can answer those questions, will he do so?
Finally, since he mentioned sugar, and since there has been little in the Press statements about this, is he yet in a position to say anything about arrangements to ensure the continuance of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, in view of the vital importance of that Agreement to the economies of a large number of Commonwealth countries?

Mr. Heath: We have had preliminary discussions on the question of sugar and, of course, we have set forth the importance of the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement in this context. I cannot give the right hon. Gentleman further details about that.
As for the post-1970 period, I referred, in my statement, to the declaration by the Six that in the event of world-wide agreements not having been obtained or not being practicable, they are prepared to negotiate specific trade agreements in these commodities with other countries, in particular, the Commonwealth countries, for that period. That is a firm undertaking which they have given in the course of these negotiations.
So far as the second question of the right hon. Gentleman is concerned, it is not correct to say that the things which have not yet been agreed between us relate only to the transitional period. The whole question of price policy in the Community and everything involved in that part of the discussions applies not only to the transitional period, but for the Whole period as far into the future as one can see.

Mr. Wilson: For the long term, the problem now for the right hon. Gentleman is to get assurances that the Community will be outward and not inward looking and that it will not seek to be autarchic in the supplies of foodstuffs.


Will he say whether he has now conceded the point that there will be reverse preferences against Commonwealth foodstuffs coming in after 1970?

Mr. Heath: I cannot, of course, deal with that particular problem, because it depends on the nature of any trade agreements made by the Community with other countries and, in particular, with the Commonwealth. That is bound to be the case until those trade agreements are negotiated. What we have been dealing with in part is the question of preferential arrangements during the transitional period, and here—

Mr. Jay: Mr. Jay  indicated dissent.

Mr. Heath: The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) must bide his patience a little longer to hear the details of this until we get further on with the negotiations.
In the transitional period there is the complication at the moment that we have one system of preference, the tariff system, and that the arrangement which is being built up in the Common Market or European Community is a levy preference and is a different system.

Mr. Turton: Will my right hon. Friend make clear—the view at present is that he is pressing for and not receiving definite assurances regarding Commonwealth imports of appropriate foodstuffs both up to 1970 and after—that he will continue on that firm line, which is in line with the pledges given by the Government last July?

Mr. Heath: Nothing has yet been decided and, as I think my night hon. Friend realises, we are dealing with both the transitional period up to 1970 and the long-term events after that. In the discussions we have been having on price policy it is not only a question of the effect on imports of these foodstuffs into the United Kingdom market, but into the whole of the market in the enlarged Community.

Mr. Grimond: If the Six have agreed to conclude special arrangements with the Common wealth after 1970, as I understand that they have done—[HON. MEMBERS: "They have not."] I wish to find out about this. I understood from the night hon. Gentleman's statement that they have and, if so, I welcome it, but may we have

that confirmed or denied? I understand from the statement that they have agreed to conclude agreements on a narrower basis in the long run. If that is so, where is the present difficulty arising? Is it over the level of pukes, or over the details of the agreements—or have I misunderstood the Minister's statement?

Mr. Heath: What I was referring to in my statement was that in the event of world-wide agreement not being possible, or not being practicable, the Six Governments have given an undertaking of their readiness to conclude agreements with the same purposes, that is, the purposes set out for world-wide agreement, with those countries who wished to do so, that is, those countries who were ready to have world-wide agreement but could not have it because other countries would not agree or were not willing to reach agreement, including, in particular, the Commonwealth countries. The Six would have agreement with the remaining countries on these products, including, in particular, the Commonwealth countries.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: May I ask my right bon. Friend whether the negotiations regarding temperate foodstuffs are now proceeding on the basis that Commonwealth imports into Europe are not to be treated more favourably than those of say the United States or the Argentine? Would not it be better for Western Europe and for the Commonwealth if the farm surpluses of the United Kingdom, Western Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were considered as a single problem within the framework of Europe and the Commonwealth and not, as it were, fobbed off on to some world-wide agreements which, may or may not come off?

Mr. Heath: I very much doubt whether it is possible to reach an agreement on these foodstuffs on the limited basis which my hon. Friend has mentioned. If we are to try to reach agreement about it, it would be an agreement which took into account other traditional suppliers, for example, to the United Kingdom markets, the United States and the Argentine. I think that my hon. Friend will also recollect that for wheat, the major cereal, there is no preference for Commonwealth wheat into this


country and, therefore, we are dealing with all suppliers on exactly the same basis, including the United States and the Argentine as well as the suppliers from Australia and Canada.

Mr. Blyton: Is the Minister aware that the further these negotiations proceed the more many of us are convinced that he is giving away everything and getting nothing in return? Is the Minister further aware that the vast majority of the people of this country are against our application? Does not he think that he should now withdraw the disastrous application to join the Common Market?

Mr. Heath: No, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely wrong in the first part of his question and, what is more, he has no justification for making the assertion contained in it. His judgment of public opinion does not, I think, correspond with that of other responsible observers.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: Would my right hon. Friend say that if the interests of the Commonwealth are to be treated on exactly the same basis as those of other third panties, that bespeaks an end to Commonwealth preference system, and, in so doing, would threaten the whole Commonwealth as a political and general institution?

Mr. Heath: I have been careful to explain that in certain major cases, and, clearly, that of wheat, the Commonwealth has no preference regarding markets and at present is being dealt with on exactly the same basis as the United States, the Argentine and any other supplier of that commodity. Therefore, in any other trade arrangements which we would want to make— if I follow the advice of my right hon. and learned Friend—we should be creating major new preferences in favour of Commonwealth countries and against the traditional suppliers of wheat—

Mr. Jay: Mr. Jay indicated dissent.

Mr. Heath: It is no use the right hon. Gentleman denying that. It is a fact and it has to be taken into account in these negotiations.
From the point of view of other products with varying levels of preferences, we are dealing with them in the transi-

tional period. As I have described, there is a new alternative system of preference in the European Economic Community which, again, is one of the major factors in these negotiations.

Mr. Gaitskell: The right hon. Gentleman mentioned that there was no Commonwealth. preference so far as wheat is concerned. Would not he affirm that there is such a preference in the case of dairy products, butter and meat, and, therefore, his argument does not quite apply in those cases? Would he further agree that the purpose, as I understand it, of securing world international agreements was to give some kind of guarantee to Commonwealth producers without involving the Community in discrimination as between different outside suppliers?
Following on that, may I ask what is meant by his statement that the Six are ready to conclude agreements, if international agreement is not possible, with countries, particularly Commonwealth countries, individually? Do the Six mean that they would be prepared to give such countries a preferential position? Otherwise, what would be the advantage of such agreements?

Mr. Heath: The view of the countries in the Community is that if countries have made a definite attempt to reach worldwide agreement—I think that the future situation will be different from that of the past because of the strength of the enlarged Community, which will be so great both in production of and the demand for these commodities that it will have much greater influence than any other single country in the past— and if they are not successful in doing that because a particular country or countries refuse to reach agreement, then they would be entitled to make trade agreements with the remaining countries. It is obvious, as the right hon. Gentleman says, that the terms of the agreement would be of value to those countries in one form or another, otherwise 'they would not wish to make it. That would be the purpose of the Community making an agreement with the remaining countries on a narrower basis than a world-wide agreement and particularly the Commonwealth countries.

Mr. Gaitskell: May I ask one other question following on that? Will the


right hon. Gentleman agree that it is of great importance to know what is exactly the position so far as preference is concerned before any such negotiations take place? Does he contemplate that such negotiations for either worldwide agreements or specific agreements will take place only in or about 1970? Does he suppose that by then the existing preferential position of the Common-wealth will have disappeared, or will it still be maintained? In other words, what will fee the alternative if such negotiations do not succeed?

Mr. Heath: The intention as it has been declared by the Community, and as we would expect, is that an attempt to secure this should be made at the earliest opportunity and if possible by 1963.

Mr. Birch: In view of the preamble of the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. H. Wilson) to his first supplementary question, would my right hon. Friend think it profitable to make representations to the Opposition that next Wednesday could hardly be a worse day for a debate in the House on the Common Market when the negotiations are just reaching their most delicate stage?

Mr. Bellenger: The House will be aware that we are due to debate this matter on Wednesday and that it is quite obvious from what the Lord Privy Seal has said that there will be very little new information for him to give us on this matter and that the negotiations will be more protracted than the Government originally thought. Therefore, may I ask the Leader of the House whether the Government will announce this week what will happen when we are in recess, when possibly—we hope so—the Lord Privy Seal will have come to some definite conclusion on his negotiations?

Mr. Heath: I think that, with the leave of the Leader of the House, I should inform the House that if the negotiations continue after the House has risen, I would on each occasion be prepared to make a public statement, giving information, exactly as if the House were sitting. We are aware of the point raised by the Leader of the Opposition, 'that these statements should be circulated as a White Paper. I know that the Leader of the House is giving thought to that.

Sir T. Beamish: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the great majority of us on this side of the House, rather than carping and criticising the whole time, wish him the very best of luck in the negotiations, and hope and pray that he will be able to negotiate terms which will be quite clearly seen to do full justice to the problems of New Zealand, Australia and Canada?

Mr. Harold Davies: Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance to the House, on the statement that he has made today, that the Six are prepared to conclude agreements and tell the House categorically whether or not he would be prepared to submit to this timetable and enter into the Common Market without his and the House knowing definitely what kind of agreements these are likely to be? Would he just take the word of the Common Market that they had agreed to negotiate and take Britain in on these terms vis-à-vis the Commonwealth?

Mr. Heath: No, Sir. In the arrangements that we have negotiated in the past few days we set out the purpose of the world-wide agreements on the subjects that would be covered in the negotiations on them. It is then dearly stated that if these are not obtained the negotiations with the remaining countries would be for the same purposes and cover the same headings.

Mr. Fell: Is my night hon. Friend not aware that he appears—it may not be true—in these negotiations to be getting further and further away from his assurances to the Commonwealth? Is he not aware that it is extremely difficult to square these prospects of negotiations with the Commonwealth countries as well as the Argentine and countries that have no connection with the Six with the promises already made to the Commonwealth countries?

Mr. Heath: I do not think that that is the case. When one is dealing with certain commodities, then other countries are involved and they are most definitely involved as traditional suppliers.

Mr. Healey: Can the right hon. Gentleman confirm that he agrees with the policy of Her Majesty's Government as defined by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last Thursday, namely, that we should not make any final decision on this until we have firm safeguards as to our vital interests, and that we should not first enter the Common Market and then negotiate for safeguards? If that is the case, and if, as the right hon. Gentleman has just told us, it is proposed to have a world conference next year to discuss the future treatment of Commonwealth foodstuffs, can he assure the House that Her Majesty's Government will enter into no commitment for the ending or even the tapering off of Commonwealth preference until we know by experience next year what the prospects of global agreements are likely to be?

Mr. Heath: No, Sir. Certainly not. The processes of obtaining world-wide agreements over a considerable number of commodities is bound, obviously, to take a certain amount of time. What is important is that we should set about it at the earliest opportunity, and that has been agreed between ourselves and the Six. What is more, we are, of course, allowing in the negotiations for the eventuality that these world-wide agreements do not come about and for what should be done both in the transitional period and at the end of the transitional period if that is not the case.

Several Hon. Members: Several Hon. Members rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot go on debating this matter without a Question before the House. I have reason to think that we may come back to it in the near future.

Orders of the Day — CONSOLIDATED FUND (APPROPRIATION) BILL

Considered in Committee; reported, without Amendment.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Orders of the Day — SOUTHERN RHODESIA

3.59 p.m.

Mr. Denis Healey: When so many controversial and complicated issues are forcing themselves on the attention of the House, there is a great temptation to let sleeping dogs lie. But in colonial affairs, at any rate, if we wait until violence leaves us no alternative but action, there is a real danger that the solution of our problems will become more difficult, and, moreover, we shall give those who desire action by Her Majesty's Government a strong incentive to start violence in order to obtain it. For these reasons I make no apology for raising the question of Her Majesty's Government's policy on Southern Rhodesia at this time.
I think that Mr. Nkomo's speech, as reported in today's newspapers, underlines the great importance of Her Majesty's Government making their intentions on Southern Rhodesia clearer than they have done so far. Whether we like it or not, there will be mounting pressure from the United Nations on Her Majesty's Government on this issue. Whether or not right hon, and hon. Gentlemen agree on the desirability or even the legality of the recent discussions in the General Assembly, I do not believe that any hon. Member can feel happy about the results of the debate. The recent debate ended with a vote of 73 to 1 against the present policies of Her Majesty's Government. The only member of the United Nations which voted against the General Assembly resolution was South Africa. Moreover, the only member of the United Nations which joined Britain in refusing to participate in the vote was Portugal.
I do not believe that the First Secretary of State can feel happy about a situation in which this sort of thing is


possible. Nor do I think that he can ignore, or does ignore, the fact that every member of the Commonwealth foam Africa and Asia united against the United Kingdom in the voting at the end of the debate.
I believe that the result of this debate shows that the survival of the Commonwealth itself in Africa and Asia may depend on Her Majesty's Government making rapid progress in meeting the reasonable demands of the African population of Southern Rhodesia. I do not for one moment want to suggest that no progress has been made in Southern Rhodesia in recent years. I have paid tribute before, as have many of my right hon. and hon. Friends, to the personal successes of Sir Edgar Whitehead in reducing social discrimination against Africans in the territory of which he is Prime Minister. He deserves great praise for this, and I hope that he sticks to his promise to repeal the Land Apportionment Act if he should win a majority in the next election in Southern Rhodesia.
But the whole history of British colonial policy shows that a reduction in social discrimination is no substitute for political advance, but that, on the contrary, a reduction in purely social discrimination can only feed the demand for political equality. It is in this respect that the present Constitution of Southern Rhodesia, which the House ratified a few months ago, has been proved to be quite inadequate. Indeed, events in the nine months since we debated the Southern Rhodesian Constitution last November have shown that all the complaints of Her Majesty's Opposition were fully justified.
The Africans who were given the opportunity of expressing their view rejected it by something like 1,000 to 1. The best proof of the inadequacy of the present Constitution is the fact that, although Sir Edgar Whitehead undertook that between 50,000 and 60.000 Africans would register on the lower roll for a vote in the elections to be held on the Constitution, in fact nearly nine months later there have not yet been 10,000 African registrations. I believe that this in itself proves beyond any shadow of doubt that the existing Constitution is totally inadequate to meet the minimum needs of reasonable Africans in the territory.
In addition, the application form which Africans are expected to read and fill in (before applying for the vote is one of the most complicated Government documents which it has ever been my misfortune to read. I cannot understand how Her Majesty's Government could expect a large registration, even if there had been good will. One of the major criticisms of British policy in the Central African Federation in recent years has been that we cannot possibly hope to get the Africans to cherish democracy if we present democracy to them in such a complicated, hypocritical and dishonest form.
It was argued by Her Majesty's Government last November that the abdication of some of our remaining powers was justified by the adoption of a Declaration of Rights in the new Southern Rhodesian Constitution. But a Declaration of Rights, like progress in the social field, both of which we welcome, is no substitute for the vote. An earlier Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, no less a person than Mr. Garfield Todd, giving evidence before the United Nations Special Committee on Colonialism, showed in detail the other day how every right defined in this Declaration of Rights is being violated at this moment in practice under repressive legislation whose whole and sole purpose is to preserve the domination of the European minority in Southern Rhodesia. Examples of such legislation are the Unlawful Organisations Act, the Vagrancy Act, the Preventive Detention Act, and the Law and Order Maintenance Act, over which the Chief Justice of Southern Rhodesia, Sir Robert Tredgold, resigned. Recently, an African was fined two months' pay for calling a police reservist a girl guide, because police reservists in Southern Rhodesia wear blue uniforms.
Whatever the European population in Southern Rhodesia may feel about the present situation, there is no doubt that for the African majority living in the territory Southern Rhodesia is now a repressive police State in which the normal democratic rights which we enjoy in this country are denied to nine-tenths of the population.

Mr. John Biggs-Davison: Nonsense.

Mr. Healey: If the hon. Gentleman disagrees with me, I ask him simply to read the texts of the Acts which I have just mentioned and to look at the way in which they have been applied in the last few years. I shall come to some examples of that in a few minutes.
Moreover, all the advances which have been made in Southern Rhodesia in recent years, which we applaud, could be upset under the existing Constitution after the next election by a two-thirds majority, which need not contain one member of the Legislature who is a native born African.
Is it surprising that in this situation there is mounting despair among the Africans in Southern Rhodesia and that their leader, Mr. Joshua Nkomo, can make such a speech, which, in many respects I deplore, as he is reported to have made yesterday according to today's British newspapers? The Africans in Southern Rhodesia can see far less advanced African peoples all over that Continent completely independent now—Ghana, Nigeria, Sierre Leone, Tanganyika, with Uganda achieving complete independence in October. Even in the other territories of the Central African Federation the African population already enjoys political rights far in advance of those in Southern Rhodesia.
The First Secretary of State boasted in a speech he made at the Savoy Hotel on 10th July that African education in Southern Rhodesia was more advanced than anywhere else on the African Continent. If this is the case—I see no reason to doubt it—why is the African in Southern Rhodesia politically inferior to the African in every other State on the African Continent? It is no good ignoring the fact that events in Southern Rhodesia are bound to be increasingly influenced in the months and years ahead by the visible spectacle of African political advance in other territories, of the Federation as well as of the Continent, and the feeling of despair that no prospect of such advance lies before the African in Southern Rhodesia, for the simple reason that Her Majesty's Government have given the European poulation effective control over the pace of African advance.
There is no doubt that violence could break out in Southern Rhodesia at any moment. We all know that it did break

out in 1959. There is no doubt that, if the Africans did use violence in the next few weeks or months to press their case, they would be crushed with little effort by the powerful army of the Federation and by a police force which is stronger than the police force of any other African State.
There can equally be no doubt that if the Africans in Southern Rhodesia do take to violence to achieve their ends, although they may be crushed this year, as the Algerians were crushed by France when they rose in 1946, the final outcome of the story will no longer remain in doubt. The final tragedy can be foreseen; the slow slide of this territory into the same sort of catastrophe as now faces Algeria, and also faces the territory of South Africa to the south—a situation in which, in the long run, the economic ruin and physical death of the European population becomes certain.
I believe that the Europeans in Southern Rhodesia are slowly coming to realise this. However much they regret or resent the direction of the wind of change, they cannot avoid recognising its existence and, in the end, bowing to its force. But it is all too obvious at the moment that the Europeans in Southern Rhodesia cannot yet bring themselves to make the necessary adjustments in the political situation unless some effective persuasion is added to the course of events.
One of the most dangerous and disturbing aspects of the present Southern Rhodesia situation is the almost total breakdown of contacts between leaders of the European minority—notably Sir Edgar Whitehead—and the leaders of the African majority—notably Mr. Joshua Nkomo. I believe that, even at this late date, it is still possible for Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom to exercise a powerful and decisive influence for political advance in this territory.
We all know that Her Majesty's Government are maintaining in this House and in the United Nations Assembly that they no longer have any real power to influence what happens in Southern Rhodesia but, when speaking for Her Majesty's Government in the Assembly debate the other day, Sir Patrick Dean, the United Kingdom delegate, stressed that the First Secretary was


now, as he said, charged with responsibility in this regard, and needed time for further study of these highly complex problems and their inter-relation with one another. It is impossible for the Government to ask for time to take a useful initiative in this respect and simultaneously deny that they have any right or authority to take such an initiative.
In my opinion, the juridical arguments deployed by Sir Patrick Dean in that debate are not persuasive. After all, Her Majesty's Government have twice recently suspended the Constitutions of dependent territories—British Guiana and Grenada—because they regarded that events in those territories were not proceeding as they should.
What is far more important and, I believe, nearer the truth, is that Her Majesty's Government, whatever their political or juridical rights, no longer have the physical power to impose a solution on the Europeans in Southern Rhodesia by force. However much we may deplore the fact that Her Majesty's Government's defence policy in recent years and the deployment of Her Majesty's Forces have brought this about, we must face the fact that it is highly doubtful whether Her Majesty's Government could physically impose on the European population a change in the existing Southern Rhodesia Constitution if the European population decided to take arms against them.
But that is not the real issue. In the first place, I believe that the European population in Southern Rhodesia knows for certain that it would have no future in Africa whatever if it were to take up arms against Her Majesty's Government and if, in consequence, it were to be expelled—as it certainly would be —from the Commonwealth. In the second place, I believe that Her Majesty's Government, and the neighbouring territories, have very powerful economic weapons of persuasion in their control. Mr. Garfield Todd, speaking in the United Nations Assembly the other day, estimated the public debt of Southern Rhodesia at about £300 million.
There is no doubt whatever that if, as most of us believe, the Federation breaks up politically, the standard of life of the Europeans in Southern Rhodesia will depend absolutely, first,

on economic assistance from Her Majesty's Government and, secondly, on economic co-operation with the richer territory of Northern Rhodesia, which many of us feel confident is likely to become independent under an African majority Government within the next year or two.
Her Majesty's Government must now make it clear that further financial aid to Southern Rhodesia will depend on political advance for the Africans in that territory. Quite apart from all political reasons for taking this view, I believe that any economic assistance to a Southern Rhodesia which was moving inevitably towards race conflict and apartheid, would be so much money down the drain; the only basis on which investment is likely to be profitable there in future is a basis in which the whole people of Southern Rhodesia are moving towards representative government, in which a 90 per cent. African majority sees its numerical superiority reflected in the Legislature.
It is inevitable that, as time passes, these economic factors will make themselves felt, but what many of us on this side fear is that unless Her Majesty's Government take some action in the next few months the whole future of that territory may be prejudiced by an outbreak of violence, and the most important single task facing Her Majesty's Government in this case is to give the Africans in Southern Rhodesia some hope of political advance in future—a hope which, at the present time, rightly or not, they do not have or feel.
I greatly regretted that the First Secretary, in his speech at the Savoy Hotel, instead of giving the Africans this hope, pandered to the illusions of the Europeans. He must himself recognise that, whatever he intended by that speech, it was politically a disaster, because the immediate and direct result was the refusal of the main African party in Northern Rhodesia and the main African party in Southern Rhodesia to cooperate with the excellent and enlightened team of advisers which the First Secretary of State had sent there to examine the situation.
I know that the High Commissioner of the Central African Federation, in the newsheet produced on his behalf by "Voice & Vision," described the First


Secretary's speech on that occasion as plain and unambiguous; words which, I imagine, the right hon. Gentleman has not always found applied to all the speeches he has made on all issues in the course of his political career. I prefer to believe that there was some ambiguity in the words quoted by the High Commissioner with such delight, and that, in particular, the First Secretary meant it When he said that our ideal was that the races should live together and that one race should not lord it over the other.
If we take that as our first ideal, and if the right hon. Gentleman really believes that, how can he support a situation in which 10 per cent. of the population has nearly 80 per cent. of the seats? It is really quite impossible to justify the existing Constitution, even in terms of the principles which the First Secretary of State laid down for himself in his speech at the Savoy Hotel the other day. If he really believes what he says, he must say something else as well, namely, that he accepts parity between the races as his immediate aim in Southern Rhodesia and that he will take all possible steps towards it.
I do not deny that the room for manoeuvre of the First Secretary is severely limited. I do not deny, either, that some of his main bargaining weapons may not become fully effective until some time has passed. But there are three steps which he can take immediately, or at least before the autumn, and certainly long before the elections now postponed until next March take place.
My first proposal is this. I suggest that he should make a declaration that Her Majesty's Government will agree to no further reduction in their responsibility for the affairs of Southern Rhodesia until representative government has been achieved in that territory. If he made such a declaration it would have three good effects. First, it would help to restore the confidence of the African population in Southern Rhodesia in the British Government's determination to fulfil its responsibilities for their welfare. Secondly, it would warn the European population of Southern Rhodesia that they will not get independence by voting for extremist parties in the next election.
Thirdly, it would have a good effect on all the parties in Southern Rhodesia by persuading them that the only path towards independence, which all of them in one form or another desire, is to work together for greater democracy and for more representation of the Africans in the territory. I hope that he will consider this suggestion, even if he is not prepared to pronounce on it immediately.
The second step I propose is a small one which, I suggest, the right hon. Gentleman should take. He should try to bring the leader of the European minority, Sir Edgar Whitehead, and the leader of the African majority, Mr. Joshua Nkomo, together to discuss the constitutional problems of the territory. As I said earlier, one of the most dangerous aspects of the problem now is the almost total breakdown of contact between the leaders of the two communities—a breakdown which is partly the result of temperamental incompatibilities on both sides which, I think, could lead to disaster unless Her Majesty's Government can find some means of overcoming it. I know that the First Secretary is extremely skilled in finding excuses for bringing people together and I am sure that if he wished he could contrive some means of at least beginning a dialogue between the communities in Southern Rhodesia and that this would help to avoid the catastrophe we all fear.
My third suggestion is this. The right hon. Gentleman should ask Sir Edgar Whitehead to release those African political leaders who are still living in restriction in Southern Rhodesia. I believe that there are only a handful of them but they include some of the most respected, important and, indeed, moderate of the Africans in the Territory. They were arrested more than three years ago, no public charge has ever been brought against them and their cases have been reviewed by a secret tribunal, the decision of which is not subject to appeal or review.
The former Secretary of the African National Congress, Mr. Nyandoro, is suffering from a serious spinal injury for which he refuses to accept treatment from a doctor sent to treat him by the Southern Rhodesian authorities. He is not even allowed to visit his own doctor, who is living 270 miles away in another


part of the territory. He wants to visit the United Kingdom and we would be happy if the First Secretary could contrive to persuade the Southern Rhodesia Government to allow him to take treatment in this country. However, I am sure that the real answer to this problem is to release these men, all of whom have now been in detention for more than three years without a public charge or trial. Many of them are known personally and respected by hon. Members of this House. The real answer is for the First Secretary to use his great influence with the local authorities to secure their release. Nothing would do more to give the Africans hope than for Her Majesty's Government to show these men that they have not been forgotten and that we are still concerned for their future.
I know that there are some hon. Members opposite who are simply looking for the quickest way by which Britain can disengage herself from her remaining responsibilities in the Commonwealth overseas so that she may turn to other fields of endeavour. I have never believed that the First Secretary belongs to that group of his party. I believe that he accepts, as we do, that Her Majesty's Government have a grave responsibility for what happens in Southern Rhodesia—a responsibility which has its sources in law but which is, fundamentally, a political and moral responsibility.
If we fail to fulfil our responsibilities in the next few months we shall strike a heavy blow at our reputation in the world. We shall strike a heavy blow at the survival of the Commonwealth in Africa and Asia. I know that the views of the European minority in Southern Rhodesia, who have contributed so much in the past to the economic advance of the territory weigh heavily with hon. Members opposite. But I ask them to look honestly at what has happened in recent years in Algeria and in South Africa and what will surely happen in Southern Rhodesia unless there is a basic change of trend in the attitude of the Europeans in that territory.
I firmly believe that the only way by which the Europeans in Southern Rhodesia can hope to survive as a community or as individuals is to accept the rights of the African majority to govern

themselves. I believe that there is still time for Her Majesty's Government and for the European population of Southern Rhodesia to accept the implications of this fact. But there is not very much time, and I appeal to the First Secretary to use his maximum influence in the immediate future to secure some action by the Government of Southern Rhodesia to this end.

4.29 p.m.

Mr. Humphry Berkeley: I share the concern of the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) about the position in Southern Rhodesia. Indeed, having fairly recently returned from a visit to the Central African Federation, my impression is that conditions are by far the most dangerous in Southern Rhodesia compared with the other two territories. I share, unhappily, the hon. Member's view that it is all too possible that there will be in the next few months an outbreak of violence, the consequences of which cannot be foreseen, unless some intervention takes place on the part of Her Majesty's Government.
Nor can I feel in the least happy that Britain, whose record of granting independence to Colonial Territories has been unrivalled hitherto, should be placed in the dock at the United Nations, and getting support only from South Africa and, to a limited degree, Portugal. From the appearance of my hon. Friend the Member for Buckinghamshire, South (Mr. Ronald Bell), I think that he had better intervene before he blows up.

Mr. Ronald Bell: I did not intend to blow up. I was merely wondering whether my hon. Friend was referring to the recent debates at the United Nations on Southern Rhodesia. If he was, I think he could not have fully read the reports of those debates because, as far as I can remember, almost every European country—certainly New Zealand, Canada and, I think, the United States—gave their support to us. My hon. Friend must, therefore, be slightly mistaken.

Mr. Berkeley: I think that my hon. Friend must know perfectly well that I was referring to that debate, and he must also be aware that the only country that voted against the resolution that was carried was, in fact, the Republic of South Africa. A number of our


friends both in Europe and in the Commonwealth were as anxious as they could be not to embarrass us and abstained. I also understand that certain Commonwealth countries, including Canada, Australia and Now Zealand, have now warned this country that in the event of this issue reappearing at the United Nations they will be unable to go so far even as abstaining. This, I think, is cold comfort so far as we are concerned, whatever the legal niceties and proprieties may be.
I should like to say a few words about this legal position. It seems to me to be very much a position which we have created for ourselves. After all, it was the British Government of 1923 who created this most extraordinary anomaly of a self-governing country which is not independent and for whose internal affairs we are apparently in no way answerable. I know of no other country where this peculiar situation persists. However, even though Southern Rhodesia has been given full internal self-government, we must have the constitutional right—I am not talking about Whether we can do it in practice— to suspend its constitution.
The hon. Member for Leeds, East mentioned two cases where this had been done in recent years, in British Guiana and Grenada. I should like to mention a third which may be even more relevant, and that is Newfoundland in 1934. Newfoundland was created a Dominion in 1917. but, owing to certain financial difficulties in which the Government of Newfoundland found themselves, a commission was set up, and, as a result, constitutional government was suspended and the government of the territory was undertaken and carried on by a commission. This was after Newfoundland had received Dominion status— that is to say, Dominion status as interpreted before the Statute of Westminster in 1926. That was certainly a degree of independence beyond the state to which Southern Rhodesia has now arrived. Therefore, my judgment would be that whatever may be the practical possibilities of altering the Constitution, theoretically we have the right to suspend the Constitution. Therefore, theoretically if we can suspend, we can also substitute.
Sir Patrick Dean, who made a most able defence of an extremely difficult case in his speech at the United Nations, put forward the argument that we were unable to intervene in Southern Rhodesia, and he based the whole force of his argument on the granting of internal self-government to Southern Rhodesia in 1923. This argument cannot logically be sustained, because we did intervene in the constitutional arrangements for Southern Rhodesia in 1961. We sent out our Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations who spent some time there negotiating with Sir Edgar Whitehead and the African leaders.
If we have had no power since 1923 to make any alterations or any suggestions to the Southern Rhodesian Government, I wonder what the Commonwealth Secretary was doing while he was there. In fact, he was trading our reserve powers as they then were for certain alterations in the Constitution. I have no hesitation in saying that I would have wished that the Commonwealth Secretary in 1961 had struck a somewhat tougher bargain. The Commonwealth Secretary is a tough man and I think there was an occasion for his toughness to have been displayed.
So far as world opinion is concerned, we really find ourselves in the worst of all possible worlds. We are generally held by the outside world to be responsible for what is going on in Southern Rhodesia. We have publicly, but to the outside world somewhat un-convincingly, established the fact that we are not responsible. At the same time, apparently, we feel inhibited from criticising the actions of the Southern Rhodesian Government. We seem to be far worse off in this state than we would be with an independent Commonwealth country. For example, our Government did not disguise their dismay at the Indian attack on Goa. Yet in this instance we are disclaiming all responsibility. We are judged, in fact, to be responsible, yet we do not hold ourselves free to disapprove of the developments in Southern Rhodesia. It seems to me that this places us in a very weak and difficult position.
I have read the United Nations resolution, and, whatever improprieties there may be in the passing of that resolution or in the manner in which the


subject was brought up, on the whole I should have thought that it was not too inaccurate or too offensive a statement of the position in Southern Rhodesia at the present time. I wonder whether I might, in parenthesis, say—there is no Foreign Office representative here—that I hope that our representative, on other occasions, will not take the rather childish and undignified attitude of walking out at the end of a debate. It is quite possible for us to make our view clear. We have done so. and it seems to me that it is for other less sophisticated countries to behave in this petulant way.
I should like to say a few words about the Constitution itself. It is perfectly true, and we should recognise, that the Constitution provides for a degree of African representation, which of course, was unknown in the previous constitution. We shall see at least 15, and possibly 16 or 17, black faces in the Southern Rhodesian Parliament after the election, but I hope that hon. Members will not be confused into thinking that a black face necessarily denotes a representative member of Parliament. After all, it would be possible for the Governor or the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia to nominate 15 Africans to sit in the Parliament, and one might go to the Parliament and see a large number of black faces and assume that this was a representative Parliament. It is the representative character of these 15 Africans which I wish to discuss for a short time.
When this Constitution was first promulgated, Sir Edgar Whitehead said that in his view about 60,000 Africans would be eligible to vote on the lower roll. As the hon. Member for Leeds, East has said, so far substantially fewer than 10,000 have, in fact, registered. We have now heard from the leader of the "Build a Nation" campaign in Southern Rhodesia that it is the calculation of his organisation that only just over 30,000 Africans would be eligible to register if every single one of them went along to do so. Thus, we see here 15 lower roll African seats the Members for which are to be elected by approximately 1 per cent. of the African population in Southern Rhodesia.
If we were to have an election in this country in which 1 per cent. of the population voted, there might be a rather bizarre result. It would depend, of course, on which 1 per cent. was chosen. What has always seemed to me to be a fundamental point in this Constitution is that those on the lower roll are limited to electing 15 members. Therefore, one ought to have as wide a franchise on the lower roll as could be arrived at. There is no question of the lower roll swamping Parliament. The lower roll is restricted to 15 members.
The First Sceretary of State will be aware that, under the arrangements which are made for any possible alteration of the Constitution, there is a reference back to all racial elements of the population. If there is an attempt to alter the Constitution, every African who has had a primary education qualifies for a vote. I do not understand why the qualification to vote in the referendum, which is a fairly wide one, should not be the same as the qualification to vote in a general election.
During the past few years, we have heard a variety of speeches in which the Southern Rhodesian Government have been praised, rightly, I think, for their determined effort to dispense as rapidly as possible with racial discrimination and for the considerable amount of money which is being spent on African education.
As regards racial discrimination, I was happy to find that, alter an interval of only two years, there had been a remarkable change in attitude. There are still pin-pricks there. There is still discrimination. In particular, I hope, as the hon. Member for Leeds, East hopes, that the Land Apportionment Act will be repealed as soon as possible. Education, I suggest, its another crucial factor. It seems to me that the Southern Rhodesian Government have hitherto failed in that they have concentrated all on giving as wide a primary education as possible, whereas, if one compares the number of secondary schools in Southern Rhodesia with the number in Kenya or Tanganyika, one finds, I fear, that Southern Rhodesia lags far behind.
Moreover, if one compares the number of university places in the Federal University in Salisbury with the number


of university places available to Africans in Kenya, Tanganyika or Uganda, again the picture is a very sad one. This must have an effect. The whole object of secondary education and further education is to provide the kind of leaders who will be necessary in politics, the Civil Service and the Armed Forces.
I turn now to some suggestions which the hon. Member for Leeds, East made. Somehow, I fed, we must disentangle ourselves from the position in which, although we say that we are not responsible for what happens in Southern Rhodesia, we are universally held to be so, and, from the position in the United Nations in which we find ourselves forced to defend the present situation. I believe that it would be appropriate for Her Majesty's Government, if further pressure arises, to make a public declaration that we would wish to see the African franchise in Southern Rhodesia substantially broadened, saying that, unhappily, owing to the constitutional position, we ace unable to give instructions to the Southern Rhodesian Government to do this. I feel that a clear declaration of our desires in this respect should not be ruled out, particularly since, had we responsibility for the territory, it is inconceivable that we should not now take these steps.
Secondly, I echo and add support to what the hon. Gentleman said about the economic weapon. I understand that the Southern Rhodesian Government have made application to our Government here for financial help for development programmes. I think that it would be quite proper for us to indicate that economic add must depend on satisfactory political advance. I hope that my right hon. Friend the First Secretary will not rule out this kind of approach.
We are often told that Sir Edgar Whitehead himself might like to see further political advance in Southern Rhodesia but, of course, that if he were to say so he would lose the election. Let us not forget that, if Sir Edgar Whitehead's position could be reinforced by African support, he could afford to lose a certain amount of support from Right-wing and reactionary Europeans. If we can get the African nationalists to contest the elections in Southern Rhodesia, there will be 15 Members at

least upon whom the Southern Rhodesian Government could rely for an element of support when they follow enlightened and progressive policies. This is something which, I believe, we should not overlook.
It is frequently said that we must keep power in Southern Rhodesia in civilised hands because Africans are not ready-some say that they will never be ready— for Parliamentary democracy. I wonder whether we reflect enough on the fact that only twenty years ago it would have been a plausible argument to say that Europeans were not suited to Parliamentary government either. In 1939, there were Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Falangist Spain, there were military dictatorships in Poland, Hungary, Roumania and Greece, and a Right-wing dictatorship in Portugal. All these regimes were of a far more brutal and authoritarian kind than anything yet seen on the Continent of Africa. Therefore, I do not think that we need despair of Parliamentary institutions working in Africa. Indeed, in such countries as Sierra Leone they seem to be working very well at present.
The tragedy of the present situation not only in the Federation, but in Southern Rhodesia in particular, is that it is here that Britain's prestige is at stake. Unless we can do something in Southern Rhodesia, we shall be pursuing totally contradictory policies in adjacent territories on the same continent. How can one possibly justify giving one man one vote in Tanganyika and Uganda and giving representative government in Nyasaland while still restricting the African franchise on the lower roll in Southern Rhodesia to 1 per cent. of the African population?
Of course, the Africans say, "The only reason you are doing this is the presence of 200,000 whites in our midst". I do not think that we should be unduly surprised at that, because what other conclusion could they possibly arrive at? It therefore seems to me that we must make every effort to induce Sir Edgar Whitehead and his Government to look again at this Constitution.
I think that we all understand the problems, and we all applaud such progress as has been made, but, unless some decisive action is taken to broaden


African representation I believe that we shall be in immense difficulties in Southern Rhodesia. These we must avoid, and I am sure that the wisdom and experience of the First Secretary of State can be brought to bear to prevent them.

4.50 p.m.

Mr. F. J. Bellenger: I wish to intervene for a few moments for the same reason which, I gather, prompted the hon. Member for Lancaster (Mr. Berkeley) to speak. He has been out to the Central Federation and has seen something of what is happening there. I have done the same. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman went under the same auspices as I did.

Mr. Berkeley: Mr. Berkeley indicated dissent.

Mr. Bellenger: I went there under the auspices of the Federal Government. I only wish that it had been possible for our own Government to arrange for more Members of the House of Commons to go out there to see what is happening so that we might take a much greater interest in this country than is taken, judging by the small attendance in the House this afternoon.
It is the Opposition's duty to raise matters of this nature from time to time. All I ask is that, in debating this subject we be very careful of the sort of language which we use. I was a little surprised at the hon. Member for Lancaster talking in terms of possible revolution. We all know that revolution is possible in many of these emerging territories, but, in view of all the responsibilities which we in this House have, should not we do our utmost to dampen down that spirit and try to get something more positive? Surely our main interest is the people in these countries and not some of the politicians in them whose bona fides I doubt.
I do not agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) when he compares Southern Rhodesia to a police State. I prefer to point out, which my hon. Friend has done, some of the difficulties to draw attention to the lack of progress on the part of successive Governments in Southern Rhodesia. To compare Southern Rhodesia with Algeria and even with South Africa is not putting the matter in its proper perspective. What has happened

in Algeria has not been entirely the fault of the French Government. Although an agreement has been reached between the French Metropolitan Government and the indigenous Government in Algeria they are already at each other's throats, and there may be civil war there.
Is that what we want in Southern Rhodesia? If it is not possible to get the whole loaf, as I do not believe it is, should not we try to get some of the loaf, as we seem to have done in the Constitution which was agreed by the African national leaders and which is to form the basis on which the elections will be fought in March. I recognise that it may not be all that we desire. I often wonder whether the "one man one vote" principle out there is really democracy as we understand it. But here we have a Constitution which has been agreed between African nationalist leaders and Her Majesty's Government. Should not we encourage the elections in March to be held on the basis of it?
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East that if 60,000 Africans are eligible to be placed on the lower roll the authorities there and, so far as they are able, Her Majesty's Government should take every possible step, as we in this country do through our electoral registers, to ensure that every eligible African is on the roll. Perhaps when the First Secretary of State speaks he will be able to tell us how far Her Majesty's Government can help in that direction. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East that, if they can help, they should certainly do so.
I believe that the debate in the United Nations was a mistake. In my opinion, it has not contributed one iota to improving either the lot of the people in Southern Rhodesia or towards some sort of successful government as a result of the election which is to take place. It is not sufficient for the hon. Member for Lancaster to talk about suspending the Constitution. That is something which this Parliament, whatever party is in power, should do its utmost to avoid. We should try to ensure that that agreed Constitution works. Of course, we know that it will not be ideal. For very many years we in the Labour Party have proclaimed our opposition to some of the


inequalities of our Constitution, but we have fought in a constitutional way, and we won power with that Constitution— in fact, sometimes in spite of it. Therefore, if there is to be responsible and democratic government in that part of the world, let us make a start somewhere.
The United Nations debate has caused far more intransigence among the Africans and far more bitterness among the white population, who, if they are to stay there and contribute to the economic prosperity of that country, should have a say in the Government of that country and should have some guarantee of their rights, which are definite and legal. Anyone who has been to Salisbury, which, seventy years ago, was a jungle, knows that it has not been built on the efforts of the Africans. The energy and economic infiltration, if I may so call it, of the white population has contributed to the building of that very prosperous city. Let us keep and improve on that prosperity.
If the Africans come into government, as they will do one of these days, they will need the co-operation of white settlers there. They will need more European capital in their country. All that I ask is that, instead of exacerbating differences which sometimes manifest themselves in most irresponsible ways out there, we in this House should do our utmost to promote the feeling of a background which will give confidence not only to the Africans but to the white population who have made their homes there and who are prepared to go on doing their best to contribute to its well-being for their own benefit and for the benefit of the Africans.
I should like to quote something which I read this morning. It concerns Kenya, which is further forward constitutionally than Southern Rhodesia. This is what Mr. Mboya, an African, said in the Legislative Council on 18th July:
 This Government"—
that is, the Kenya Government—
at the moment is a grant-aided one with hardly any money. It is safe to say we are a bankrupt country except for the generosity of Her Majesty's Government.
But not all the generosity of Her Majesty's Government, the generosity subscribed by British taxpayers, will

keep Southern Rhodesia afloat and maintain its present improved prosperity. Much of it will have to come through private funds.
Private funds will certainly not remain in that country or be further injected into it if there is not the confidence which, I am glad to see, was expressed by Mr. Ngala, whose speech was that of a responsible politician. I am glad to quote it to the House. He said:
The future of Kenya as a democratic country very much depends on the success of the more reasonable political leaders in the country in achieving their target …
I strongly believe that moderate politicians pulling together here"—
he was talking about Kenya—
can come out on top in the end, but any moderates mixed up with extremists"—
to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East probably referred in his closing words—
in a party in this crucial stage are doing a grave disservice to the sort of Kenya we want after independence. What they are doing"—
that is, the extremists to whom my hon. Friend probably referred—
is giving an opportunity for the Communists to come out on top.
It is because I do not want to see Communists on top there or anywhere in Africa that I appeal to all hon. Members, on both sides, when they discuss this matter and voice legitimate grievances, to put them in a form which will ensure that there will be a progression, which will not come about in five minutes but will take longer than that, so that we get a Government in Southern Rhodesia which, if it does not represent all the people in exact proportions as we should like it to do, will, nevertheless, ensure progress in that country so that all are able to enjoy it. If we can get that, debates like this in the House of Commons are well worth while.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: My right hon. Friend has explained with great care and eloquence why democracy does not require universal suffrage and how the interests of a democracy in some countries might be better served without it and by the domination of a group of interested and expert people. In those circumstances, will my right hon. Friend explain exactly what is his quarrel with the Communists?

Mr. Bellenger: I have not explained in precisely those terms. My hon. Friend is very adept at turning arguments. What I was saying—and I hope that the House understood me—was that democracy takes all shapes and forms. There is a nominal democracy in Ghana, but I would not call it democracy.

5.3 p.m.

Mr. Stephen Hastings (Mid-Bedfordshire): I agree with almost every word that the right hon. Member for Basset-law (Mr. Bellenger) said and it is a pleasure to say so. It seemed to me that the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) based much of his argument on two false analogies. The first is, in broad terms, that because a situation would be undemocratic in this country, therefore it is undemocratic in Central Africa, in Southern Rhodesia. The second was to compare the attitude of white Southern Rhodesians with their opposite numbers, if one may so call them that, in Algeria. The idea of non-racialism is a creation of the white Southern Rhodesians. What of the O.A.S.? Does the hon. Member seriously believe that the comparison holds water? I do not.

Mr. Healey: I was comparing the situation in Rhodesia now with the situation in Algeria as I knew it during the war and during the first rising there in 1946. The O.A.S. came later. What I am suggesting—I firmly believe it—is that unless there is a basic change in the attitude of the white population in Southern Rhodesia, as, tragically, there was not in Algeria in 1946, Southern Rhodesia is likely to follow that bloody pattern.

Mr. Hastings: I am sure that the hon. Member holds his view sincerely, but it does not in any way alter my argument. Never in Algeria did the white population resolve a plan to compare in any way with non-racialism as it is being actively advocated by the white Southern Rhodesians.
Before I pass to my few remarks, I should like to refer to one point in the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Mr. Berkeley), with most of which, I regret to say, I did not agree. I am, however, happy that there was one point on which I did. My hon. Friend

referred to education for Africans in Southern Rhodesia and said that it was a pity that in the higher echelons of education—that is, secondary education —the record was not as good as it was at primary level.
As I am sure my hon. Friend knows as well as, if not better than, I do, this is an argument which often takes place among those most closely concerned in Salisbury. When I was out there, I found that there was a considerable pull both ways. The demand for education among African people, of all sections of the population, especially of recent years, has grown to such an extent that it is difficult to resist the pressure. This is one of the reasons why the Southern Rhodesians have adopted what they call the pyramid rather than the column. I agree with my hon. Friend that had they adopted the column structure—that is, to broaden secondary education—they would be on the way to producing leaders more quickly. This is probably what should, in the circumstances and given the limitations, be done.
The chief dangers to the peaceful evolution of non-racialism in Southern Rhodesia seem to me to be twofold, but neither of the reasons that I shall put forward has yet been dwelt upon at any length. The first is a Jack of development capital and the second is the constant pressure upon Southern Rhodesia by the United Nations, or, rather, by a group of Afro-Asian countries using the United Nations as their instrument. So much depends upon capital investment; the advance of African education and opportunity for Africans, upon which depends also the pace of change.
Despite the difficulties, strangely enough, the economic situation out there has remained remarkably stable. In 1961, agricultural production expanded and mineral output was a record. Nevertheless, there has been a considerable decline in new capital investment. The reason which is so often given for this decline—at least, this is what I heard both when I was out there and subsequently—is political instability. But surely a measure of instability, at least by our rather staid standards, is inevitable in Africa. This continent is on the move. Tension and change are things which we should get accustomed to living with in Africa.
It is no exaggeration to say that, given all the difficulties, there are two dazzling prospects for investment in Southern Rhodesia. The first is what might be termed the break-through to the African market. The second is the probability that as Africa develops generally, Southern Rhodesia, with her vast natural resources, cam become the industrial hub of the entire continent.
The development of the African market is another way of describing an increase in African purchasing power, or, if you like, an increase in African commercial opportunity. There are encouraging trends and it is worth mentioning one or two figures. There are, for example, over £5 million of African savings in the Post Office Savings Bank, in building societies and in commercial banks in Southern Rhodesia today, and there are over 350,000 African savings accounts, a figure which is increasing at the rate of 4,000 a month. That is not, however, the whole of the story. African capital in Southern Rhodesia has been estimated at about £62 million and this too is increasing at something like £3 million annually. This is a step in the right direction. What is even more important—and it was referred to in the latest Barclays Bank Survey—is the increase in applications by Africans to start retail businesses.
I make a plea, however, for support out there for the courageous fight by Mr. Abrahamson, the Labour Minister, for increased wages for African workers. This it seems to me, quite apart from moral grounds, is only common sense. The Government must try to increase the standard of living and the purchasing power of the African. There have been advances recently, but they could go further. When the idea of property, in our terms, and profit becomes general among Africans and when there is a general demand for consumer durables and goods comparable to those in a European market, the whole picture might well change, and there could be a rich reward for those with the courage and vision to invest today in Southern Rhodesia.
Happily, there are those who see it that way. I was much encouraged to read of the latest negotiations for a new £4½ million steel plant at Bukwe between

the Rhodesian Iron and Steel Corporation and Kawasaki, a Japanese consortium. Incidentally, the House may be interested to know that trade between Japan and Southern Rhodesia has increased from something like £153,000 in 1954 to £7 million today. Therefore, it is plain the Japanese do not take the gloomy view which, unhappily, some of our own industrialists seem to of the prospects there.
There are many very favourable signs A mission of German bankers which went to Northern Rhodesia recently, reported that despite political difficulty there was every prospect of the country developing economically. If that is true of Northern Rhodesia, it is doubly true of Southern Rhodesia. At the recent trade fair at Bulawayo the Germans were much in evidence. The French and Italians were there for the first time, and Danish capital is coming in.
It is, perhaps, an unfortunate commentary that the Japanese should be showing us the way in a country which we created. I wonder what Cecil Rhodes would say if he were alive today and could reflect on the rather timorous attitude of some of our own industrialists. Of course, there are notable exceptions; the great African groups and others from this country and the United States. Rovers have just started a factory out there and an Anglo-American concern, Cheeseborough Pond has recently set up plant, but much more needs to be done.
I now turn to another form of investment which outweighs all the capital in the world by a great deal in my view, and that is people. I was much struck by what I read the other day about an American initiative known as "Operation Crossroads". This is a privately sponsored initiative by which about 300 young Americans, doctors and students, are to spend a period in the Federation and in Southern Rhodesia building schools, recreation centres and clinics and working with the Africans.
This seems to me to be a thoroughly worthwhile operation and something which could well be undertaken perhaps with the help of the Department of Technical Co-operation—incidentally, to digress for a moment, what an extremely unimaginative title that is for work of such great importance—or independently


of it. We could surely carry out the same kind of thing and on a very much more ambitious scale. Nothing but good will and understanding would result. But more important, there might, as a result of it, be an immigration of young people again into Southern Rhodesia which will be welcome on all grounds.
I read in The Times survey of public opinion the other day that there was a feeling of pointlessness about life among our youth. I have not had examples of that myself, but it may be true. If it is, then perhaps it will be worth while for some of our young people to consider Southern Rhodesia. When I was there I found the exact opposite, a feeling of stimulus and excitement with the non-racial experiment.
I turn to the second of the main dangers that I outlined, that of the United Nations. The threat here is twofold. First, there is the menace of a further outbreak of violence in Katanga. If it happens—and there is a mass of evidence that this has been, and perhaps still is being considered by the United Nations and the United States as a possible course of action—the reaction in Southern Rhodesia would be immediate and full of serious consequence. Seen from Salisbury, the chaos that might result in Katanga would spill over, very easily, because of the tribal situation, into Northern Rhodesia and towards the Zambesi.
I believe that we should be foolish to imagine that the Southern Rhodesians would be willing to contemplate that passively. Furthermore, the present precarious and vital political balance among the Europeans in Southern Rhodesia might well be upset as a result. So, for the sake of the Colony, I say to my right hon. Friend that we must prevent a recurrence of this folly. It is not enough to disapprove; we should marshall all the powers of sanction that we command, and if the matter is brought to the Security Council we should have the courage to use the veto.
To turn for a moment to the gratuitous resolution by the United Nations after the Report of the Committee of Seventeen, my right hon. Friend dealt forcefully and well with that in the speech which he made at the Savoy not long ago, which has been alluded to already,

when, as he said, he told the United Nations a few home-truths about Southern Rhodesia, and added:
You will find a record which is unequalled in Africa, and which no one in the United Nations has a right to criticise at the present time.
And I agree with him. There is no question of United Nations' interference with this Constitution now or at any other time. And, I would say, there should be no question of change in the franchise before the elections.
Uncertainty has bedevilled the situation enough already and to change again now would be to ensure, as the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw made so clear, that captital would drain out of the country in a flood instead of a trickle. These pressures must be countered. They stem from a far more dangerous form of racialism than any prejudice which may still exist in certain quarters among the white people in Southern Rhodesia.
If these twin problems are overcome, I have confidence in the future of Southern Rhodesia. It is an awe-inspiring experiment. I see no reason why, with understanding and encouragement, it should not succeed. I saw in the Press that the United States Consul-General, a new appointment, said on arrival in Salisbury the other day:
My wife was born in Louisana and I in Arkansas, and this is why we do not come to tell the Federation how to solve its problems.
Those were welcome words and, if I may say so with respect, a welcome change. We need understanding not only from our own people, but from our friends as well.
So long as Sir Edgar Whitehead is at the head of the United Federal Party there is always the chance of a working compromise. Indeed, if it were not for the chronic divisions which exist within Zapu at the moment and the pressures there are from the Rhodesian front and the Dominion Party upon Sir Edgar a compromise might well be possible before the elections take place.
Of course, there will always be argument about timing. That is what we are engaged in this afternoon. But to those who complain about a steady hand over to an African majority, I say: of course the Europeans are a dominant class. Their domination is still


virtually complete. But are they not the first dominant class in all history which has decided voluntarily to hand over its power to compatriots of another race. And is this not a decision of great dignity and immense courage and something of which we—we their kinsmen— have a right to be proud, rather than to carp and criticise?
"One man, one vote" in Central Africa and Southern Rhodesia is manifest nonsense. Anything near it is. In conclusion, I would cite the judgment of no less a thinker than Solon of Athens, one of the founders of democracy as we know it, who was once asked what, in his wisdom, he believed to be the best form of government for the people. He replied, "For what people and at what time?" Those in this House and outside it who dogmatise about the political solution in Southern Rhodesia would do well to reflect on Solon's words.

5.20 p.m.

Mr. J. Grimond: With a great deal of what the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings) has said about economic development in Southern Rhodesia I find myself in agreement, but I must right at the outset make a protest against his use of certain words because this is exactly the equivalent of the use of words, though in another sense, by the Communists. It may foe that democracy is not a suitable form of government for Southern Rhodesia, but it is no good pretending that a form of government which gives one man ten votes and another none is democracy. There may be another and a better form of government than democracy. Equally, it may be that we should have some new form of racial State in Southern Rhodesia, but a State in which one part of the citizens, simply because they are all of one colour, take to themselves a great many privileges and the major political power is not an example of multiracialism but of racialism.

Mr. Hastings: What is a complete democracy? Is democracy complete in this country—where murderers do not have votes and where people who are registered as insane do not have votes? It is a question of degree.

Mr. Grimond: If the hon. Gentleman really does not see any difference between denying votes to murderers —and, I believe, to peers, too, for that matter—and denying it to a very large section of the population, a majority of the population, all I can say is that if and when the Government bring in a Measure by which all Conservatives have one vote and all Labour and Liberal people have ten votes we will support them.
All I am saying is that he should clarify the argument to make it respectable. If he had said, "I do not agree with democracy in Southern Rhodesia. I think they are not fit for democracy and they should have a form of paternal Government"—which has been tried with varying degrees of success—one could say that that could be a respectable form of arrangement in many ways. Equally, if he had said, "I think this should be a racial State. I think the whites are superior, they are better educated and have a right to rule the country", that would be logical and reasonable. But to say that this is a very interesting experiment in non-racialism and it is not racial is to do exactly what the Communists do, if I may say so, and it is to use the words used by Communist representatives at the United Nations, who use them in exactly the opposite sense.
However, as I said, with a lot of what the hon. Gentleman had to say about the development of the country at least economically I can agree, but if we are going to be able to develop this country economically it must have political stability. When it comes to that question I find myself in agreement with the hon. Gentleman the Member for Lancaster (Mr. Berkeley) and in more or less total disagreement with both the speakers who followed him.
I should have thought that we had had this story before. We have had it in Ireland; we have had it in Cyprus. The one way to get an extreme Government is to deny the moderate elements in the country what they consider to be their legitimate rights. I can understand denying them the rights if we do not think them right, but everybody in this House does think that they are right. Everybody in this House believes in some form of democracy, genuine


democracy. There may be a form of presidential democracy, but we cannot have a form of democracy which weights the whole democratic system in one way, in the way it is weighted in Southern Rhodesia. If we had denied a scheme of presidential democracy or presidential Government, or if we had some form of authoritarian Government, we could seek to pass that on, but we keep on telling the world that the form of democracy we believe in is Parliamentary democracy based on universal suffrage. And then we say that that, of course, is not to be taken seriously by Africans.
Another point made by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Lancaster, and which cannot be made too often, is that in fact when we have a State in which there are only black Africans we have no difficulty in giving them one vote par head. The difficulty arises only when we have a white minority. Do not lot us be hypocritical about it. This is a perfectly good reason for the difficulty, but it is the reason, and it is no good pretending that there is any other reason. It has not arisen, for instance, in Tanganyika or Ghana or Nigeria. It is because there is a white minority, and that is the difficulty, and I accept this difficulty, and I think it is a genuine difficulty, and it is a genuine difficulty because the whites are racialists. I dare say that Africans are racialist, too, but the difficulty arises because the whites are racialists, and I believe myself that the whites are very ill advised to move so slowly. I think all history shows that not only can they not support themselves in their own conscience, but they cannot support themselves by force of arms, either.

Mr. Emyrs Hughes: Nor in Kenya.

Mr. Grimond: Nor elsewhere.
It is all very well for the hon. Gentleman to deplore revolution and for the House to talk of revolution, but when we have a situation where they have no alternative but to use force we are going to get force.
If we look at history we see the very laudable attempts to give people self-government, and the one thing which has made it difficult has been delaying handing over that power too long, with the result that we got the use of force. And

then the British Government have given way. Again and again they have been forced to give way in the face of force when they would not give way in the face of reason.
This is exactly the situation which we have to beware of in Southern Rhodesia, and the tragedy in Southern Rhodesia will be that it will be wholly unnecessary. They have made progress. They have had extremely little trouble until 1959. It is a State with great possibilities, and there again I agree with the hon. Gentleman the Member for Lancaster that there is a great responsibility on this House to see, as far as it is in our power to see, that this history continues.
Of late there have been signs that things will not be quite so satisfactory as they have been. There are, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) said, I think seven people who have been kept in prison without trial from 1959. I do not think that that is a situation this House can be complacent about. There have been signs of violence, and now we have their efforts to raise their grievances at the United Nations.
I would agree that the British have a far more satisfactory record of colonial administration than the United Nations because the United Nations has not got our experience, but I would ask the hon. Gentleman who resents the fact that they have raised their grievances at the United Nations, what else could they do? The great majority of people in Southern Rhodesia have no other outlet, and they take this matter to the United Nations. I would have thought, considering the way in which most nations in the world have behaved, that the behaviour of the African and Asian countries at the United Nations has been creditable.
I am not saying it has been logical or defencible on every ground, but again, as the hon. Member for Lancaster pointed out, if we think of the conduct of white nations in our lifetime and compare it with the conduct of some of those supposedly less educated and less advanced nations of Africa and Asia we see that theirs is not too bad. They have still to intern several millions of people in concentration camps; they have still to set up Fascist conditions of anything


like the intensity of those of Germany, or which the Communists have set up in Russia, and we ourselves, at the time of Suez, were not too careful about our international behaviour. Therefore I do not think that it is really either honest or wise of this country to object too much to people who have, I think most people would agree, a genuine grievance taking it to the United Nations instead of resorting to force, and that is in fact what the Southern Rhodesians have done.
What we ought to do is to examine this to see what we can do. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Lancaster pointed out that we are in a very invidious position when we are held responsible for internal security in the country and when we really have no means of enforcing our will, and, indeed, the constitutional position is obscure.
I still believe that there should be a clear expression from this country of its hope that the progress towards a genuine form of democracy will continue at a rather more speedy pace, an expression from this House that non-racialism will be interpreted in its normal sense as meaning the dismantlement of those bars which still exist against the coloured races—I give credit for the fact that a great deal has been done to remove them, but they have not gone as fax as I should like—and an expression from this House that, while it may not be possible to have Parliamentary democracy in our model in Southern Rhodesia at once, there is nevertheless a clear understanding in the world about the broad principles of democracy and we should expect it to be respected in Southern Rhodesia. That would be valuable.
I also believe that it is no good deluding ourselves that anything will make up for it. I do not think it is any good telling people "You will be rich. Never mind about political liberty." We exist because we do mind about political liberties. If those people did not mind about them, it would be our business to toll them that they ought to mind about them, and we should also tell them that consumer goods are not enough. Also, it is no good telling people that in the course of time little problems like putting people into prison

without trial will be abandoned. There are people now in prison without trial. The one doctrine that we have been spreading over the world is that everybody should mind about that, and should mind now. That is the British message to Africa, Asia and all our dependencies. It is no good our turning round at this late date and saying, "Refrigerators will do as well."
I personally am by no means pessimistic about the future of Southern Rhodesia, but I believe that in the last year or two there have been signs that, as in all cases of this nature, the way to get a changeover to the democratic system, to get a settlement and to get a safe position for the white settlers is not to delay matters but to expedite them.

5.33 p.m.

Colonel Sir Harwood Harrison: I found myself very much in agreement with the remarks of the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger) and the wise rebuke which he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Mr. Berkeley).
Like many other hon. Members, I have been on an official delegation to Southern Rhodesia, and I have also paid private visits there. I want to draw attention to two aspects of the human side of the problem, because I feel that it is important that the Government, which I believe is so well and wisely and progressively led by Sir Edgar Whitehead, should be given encouragement for the people of that country from this House. It should be shown that we are not nagging at them all the time about what they are doing. After all, we are politicians, and, if nothing else, humanitarians.
I am worried whether the African population of Africa as a whole are being adequately and well fed. By the aid of science they are living longer, and they are increasing rapidly in numbers. As I see it, whatever the industrial development in an African country, we shall still have as many living off the land in 15 or 20 years' time as today. I think it is right that the world should know of the great lead that Southern Rhodesia has given to Africans who live off the land. Southern Rhodesia was the first to have an aerial survey, and it was the first country to get Africans


settled with proper title to five acres of their own ground.
To my mind, that is the only way that agriculture in such places can be developed. It is important that those who own the land shall be able to pass it on to their sons and know that it cannot be fragmented again. In that way they will gradually grow more than they need for their own requirements and will be able to sell it as a cash crop. Unless we can get such agricultural development not only in Southern Rhodesia but in other parts of Africa, we shall have a great deal of malnutrition continuing throughout Africa for many years.
Consequently, a great deal of high praise should go to Sir Edgar White-head's Government and in particular to one of his Ministers. On the industrial side, one has already been mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings). I refer to Mr. Quinton, the Minister in charge of native affairs. Anyone who has talked to him knows how forward-looking he is.
I believe that a great deal more is needed, and I should like any money which comes from world banks and elsewhere for development to go into the training of field officers and the use of fertilisers. Southern Rhodesia has a very fine agricultural research college, the Henderson College, but most of the research done there is for the benefit of European farmers, and I hope it will be more widespread in the future. On this side, I do not believe that the present Government can be faulted.
Turning for a moment to the business side, one has there European businesses, both big and small. Tribute has been paid to the way they have developed the country. I remind the House of my experience when I visited a large organisation and saw its canteen. I was told that they had to have seven different tables for their African workers because they belonged to different tribes and would not sit and eat together. So often we in this House forget the differences among the Africans themselves, their tribal and religious differences. They are not just one. This is what worries me so often in dealing with these problems.
One off the most gratifying afternoons I had in Southern Rhodesia was at

Bulawayo when I met a number of African tradesmen at a tea party. They were normal types—a grocer, a tailor, a garage proprietor and so on. They had very much the same problems as small traders in our country. I asked how they paid for their goods, whether they gave credit and whether their trade was going up. What is so sad is that when there have been unrests it is these very successful Africans, whom we look upon as the backbone of the future, that the mob has attacked, trying to destroy their houses and shops. We should do all we can to encourage a Government which is trying to build up order slowly and to build up a section of the Africans as responsible citizens.
I was a little alarmed when the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) kept on saying that Sir Edgar White-head had little or no contact with Mr. Nkomo, the leader of the Africans. Much has been said about "one man, one vote", though I do not know whether Mr. Nkomo was elected to the leadership of the Africans on that basis. I am sure that Sir Edgar Whitehead has a great deal of contact with responsible Africans. Much as "one man, one vote" may foe an ideal, there are long processes towards it, and I do not think it is right if it leads immediately to a dictatorship. We want to see built up a community of Africans who have some stake and some property and who are responsible citizens and potential leaders for the future for those whose conditions are not so good.
I deplore those in this House who say that nothing is left but force. To my mind, if we threaten that, it is inevitable that Southern Rhodesia might well opt out to join South Africa, and I do not think we should like that. If that happened, the state of many of the Africans would be far worse than it is under their present Government. Therefore, I, for one, feel grateful to Sir Edgar Whitehead and his Government for the advances that have taken place. I believe that they should be encouraged, that they should feel that they have friends in this country and that we understand their great problems—which are many—and that we believe that they are trying to face them as responsible politicians and statesmen.

5.40 p.m.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: I agree very much with what the hon. and gallant Member for Eye (Sir H. Harrison) said about the need for improvement and giving encouragement to the growth of African agriculture. In discussing the development of African countries generally, both Africans and people here often forget that Africa is primarily an agricultural continent and that development of these new methods is immensely important. But the evidence from Africa has been that if we wish African agriculturists, brought up in the traditional way of life, to change their methods, this can only be done by a Government in which they have confidence and which they believe is genuinely representative.
In country after country during nationalist agitation, the efforts by the colonial agricultural officers to introduce new methods were rejected, but when the newly independent Government came into office the same methods which had been treated as colonialist plots during dependence were carried through because the Government had the confidence of the people who elected them. Therefore, if the hon. and gallant Gentleman wishes to see the kind of agricultural progress which Southern Rhodesia needs, it can only be done on the basis of a much more representative form of Government than there is at the moment.
The hon. and gallant Gentleman disputed with my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) about Sir Edgar Whitehead's lack of contact with African nationalist leaders. My impression was the same as that of my hon. Friend, and one of the tragedies—I am not apportioning blame—is the lack of communication between the political leaders of the various races in Southern Rhodesia. I will quote for the hon. and gallant Member's benefit what Sir Edgar Whitehead himself said in Parliament in Southern Rhodesia on 26th June. It was very revealing. Sir Edgar said:
Outside of officials I would say there are not more than about 50 Europeans today who make a regular practice of travelling into the African areas and townships at frequent intervals and discussing the problems with the people there on a basis of complete equality.
That was a devastating statement for the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia

to make about his own country and is at any rate an answer to the somewhat rosy picture of a multi-racial community painted by the hon. Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings).
I intervene in this debate because I have very recently visited the Central African Federation and have seen some-think of what is going on there, however little. I visited both Nyasaland and Southern Rhodesia and what struck me were the tremendous differences in atmosphere. Since the democratic elections in Nyasaland, a new atmosphere has been created—a new feeling of cooperation between Africans, Europeans and Asians, between politicians, civil servants and businessmen.
Of course, there are still individual acts of intolerance by both Africans and Europeans, but the whole atmosphere of Nyasaland has been transformed. I was there with a number of other people who had not been in Central Africa before and knew little about it. It was difficult to describe to them the kind of atmosphere associated with Nyasaland only a year or two ago When there was a state of emergency. The coming of representative Government to Nyasaland has not solved the problems, which are still appalling, but it has created an entirely new atmosphere and has given a much better chance of tackling those problems effectively.
The atmosphere in Southern Rhodesia, however, was in sharp contrast. It was one not of co-operation but of suppression, of mutual suspicion, of mounting tension. I straight away pay tribute, as others have done, to Sir Edgar White-head for his courage in seeking to remove various forms of racial discrimination, and for his political courage in putting forward the repeal of the Land Apportionment Act and all the other legislation which discriminates in terms of urban development.
But my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East is perfectly right in saying that to carry through the abolition of racial discrimination by itself, without accompanying it by changes in the holding of political power, really does no good at all. Indeed, Sir Edgar is throwing away the tremendous advantages which he might enjoy by his proposals for the repeal of these discriminatory


Acts by refusing to change the constitution in the direction of a really democratic basis.
The evidence of this is the fact that, at the very time that he is seeking to persuade his public opinion that it ought to repeal measures like the Land Apportionment Act, he is also having to propose new amendments to toughen the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act. I found myself profoundly disturbed by the degree of the repressive measures in operation in Southern Rhodesia today, at a time when there is no state of emergency and things are comparatively peaceful.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East has mentioned the people detained at Gokwe. They include some of the most notable leaders of the African Nationalist movement, and they have been detained for three and a half years. An editorial in the Guardian the other day drew attention to this fact and said it was a disgrace that these men should still be suffering restriction without trial.
I understand from my information that Sir Edgar Whitehead himself would in many ways be agreeable to seeing them brought out of restriction, but that there are elements in the public services in Southern Rhodesia which make difficulties about it. This is a case where a decisive intervention by the First Secretary of State—he can do it privately if he likes, so long as the results are right —might well be the means of getting these people freed.
Secondly, there are the activities of the police in the present situation. When political assemblies take place, the police are always present in very considerable numbers—and they carry arms. Anyone who has attended African political meetings knows how long they can go on. I have no doubt that the police get weary of it, but their way of relieving the boredom is to raise their rifles and taking casual sightings on members of the audience. No doubt nothing serious is meant but we can all understand how provocative such actions in a political meeting can be and how they raise the risk of such incidents as we have had in the past.
Again, the police also have the right now to interfere with speech. If they hear sentences which they believe are

seditious, they do not wait for the speech to be completed, nor do they lay evidence of the speech before the prosecuting authorities, which is the normal method; instead, they march on the platform in the middle of the speech and take the speaker away. That recently happened to Mr. Takawira, external affairs secretary of Z.A.P.U., whose case is now the subject of an appeal. One cannot imagine anything more provocative and more deserving of the description of police state which my hon. Friend gave it.
I heard of one incident when a leading American businessman, with prospective big investment in Southern Rhodesia, went to dinner with the editor of an African paper, a well-respected and moderate African. The American wanted to meet some African nationalist politicians. The dinner party was considerably enlivened by a police invasion in the middle of it and most of the evening was spent in his host being interrogated by the police, who suspected that there was an illegal meeting taking place privately. If chat sort of thing does not deserve to be described as the action of a police state, what does?
A disturbing case is being investigated by Mr. Justice Lewis. Stones were thrown through the window of an African house and a masked figure was discovered outside and arrested. It was found that he was a European member of the C.I.D. I do not know the results of the investigation, but there are a great number of disturbing incidents of that kind in Southern Rhodesia at the moment.
One should say in fairness that the judiciary has acted with great independence in these matters and that there has been a succession of adverse decisions against the police. This is no doubt one of the reasons why Sir Edgar Whitehead feels compelled to toughen the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act. I ask the First Secretary of State to use his good offices in this matter.
I am told that over the years the police have enjoyed a good reputation and that it is only now, because they are having what amounts to very severe political pressure put upon them by the European minority, that they have got themselves into this situation. One hears stories that if there were to be


any O.A.S. type of resistance by the European community it might very well come from inside the police force. I hope that that is not so and that something can be done to reverse this situation before it becomes too late.
I am sure that the only real way in which a much more hopeful situation can be created in Southern Rhodesia is to bring about a much more liberal constitution than the one that was agreed at the conference in the early part of 1961. I think there are strong reasons for urging the Southern Rhodesian Government that it should accept and propose changes in the constitution. The elections are now being postponed until March next year. This means that if the elections were to take place the constitution under which they would be fought will be more than two years old. With the pace of events in Africa as a whole, and, in particular, the changed circumstances in Central Africa over a much more recent period, it is fair to argue that the 1961 constitution has been completely overtaken by events and that there is now a strong and reasonable case for having a new constitution before an election occurs.
In any case, the 1961 constitution was put before this House and also before the electorate in Southern Rhodesia on the basis of a gross miscalculation of what it actually meant in terms of the sharing out of political power. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East mentioned that we in this House understood that this proposal of 15 seats meant the enfranchisement of between 50,000 and 60,000 Africans. Now, the hon. Member for Lancaster says that officials in Southern Rhodesia ace saying that the maximum roll on this basis will probably be about 35,000 or 36,000. In addition, there has been a new census in Southern Rhodesia, which shows that the African population of Southern Rhodesia is a great deal greater than had been thought earlier.
So, in fact, the present constitution will offer the Africans a great deal less than we believed when we passed the necessary legislation through this House. The present arrangements are immensely complicated. My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East has quoted the form one has to fill in, and I have looked at

one of the more simplified posters displayed in the post offices urging the Africans to register to vote. There, they have produced a series of questions in two columns side by side, and they say to the Africans, "If you can answer 'Yes' to three of the questions on the left and to one of the questions on the right, you will probably be entitled to vote." I am perpetually puzzled that people who are considered too immature for the "one man one vote" principle should be considered capable of tackling a voting system which would baffle any ordinary voter in this country.
I do not wish to take up much more time of the House, which wants to hear what the First Secretary has to say, but I wish to tell him that my impression from the conversations I had in Central Africa, particularly with some of the Nationalist leaders, is that they are anxious to be conciliatory. I believe, and I say this on my own authority, that they will accept an honourable compromise if it were offered them in terms of an advance on present constitution. I think one also has to add that, although they are conciliatory, they also feel pretty desperate, and that was the background to the kind of speech which we had from Mr. Joshua Nkomo at the weekend.
I find it rather humiliating to realise the degree to which the Africans feel deserted by the people in this country, and I think that if the British Government feel embarrassed by the approach made to the United Nations, the answer is that if there had been a more adequate constitutional advance in 1961, the African Nationalists would not have felt that they had to go to the United Nations.
I believe that the First Secretary's job is to try to use his influence to produce a much more liberal constitution. I do not under-estimate the difficulties of his task. I think that he has been left with perhaps the most difficult colonial problem in the whole Commonwealth. He has to ride a tightrope, and move fast enough in order to prevent the Africans resorting to direct action through a feeling of despair, but gradually enough to prevent the Europeans taking fright and resorting to unconstitutional methods of their own.
The impression with which I came back was that Sir Edgar Whitehead can be persuaded to make the necessary changes. He has already gone a considerable distance on the social front, and if pressed on the political front, I think he will be willing to give way. I think he can go down in history, if he wishes, as somebody willing, however late, to make the necessary concessions to create a democratic government in Southern Rhodesia and provide an opportunity for economic advance for those Europeans who have a great stake there. The only alternative is to persist in trying to bold an utterly impossible position in an African Continent moving in an headlong advance towards independence.

5.56 p.m.

The First Secretary of State (Mr. R. A. Butler): This debate has, to some extent, answered itself. There have been speeches from both sides of the House. The speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Mr. Berkeley), was more in tone with that of the hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey), who opened the debate, than those of some of my hon. Friends on this side. So that one cannot say that we have not heard every point of view on this very difficult subject.
I should like to endorse some observations of the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Bellenger). It is most important to have regard to the language we use, not to exaggerate and not to make out that things are going to be more difficult than they are likely to be. Therefore, I hope that the message that will go to Southern Rhodesia from this debate is that this debate has been initiated by the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends with a view to being helpful and not to make things more difficult. If that is the spirit in which the debate is accepted, let us hope that it may have a useful effect.
One also ought to endorse what the right hon. Member for Bassetlaw said about Southern Rhodesia not being a police State. I think that is a grave exaggeration, and I should not like to stand at this Box without repudiating that statement and saying that I think it is an exaggeration.

Mr. Healey: Would the right hon. Gentleman at least accept that this was

the view of the Chief Justice of Southern Rhodesia himself, who resigned two years ago, because of one of the Acts of which we complain?

Mr. Butler: Everybody has the highest regard for the Chief Justice, whom I have met on several occasions. We all know his liberal-minded approach to this question, and I would not wish to bring him into this debate, but to leave him to act and speak on his own, with the respect which he deserves. I am sure that all sides of the House respect Sir Robert Tredgold for his influence and all that he has said and done, and what influence he can bring to bear.

Mr. Healey: He said it was a police State.

Mr. Butler: I do not accept that it is a police State, and I do not propose to give way to the hon. Gentleman.
So much for the wisdom of the right hon. Gentleman's observations, which I thought we must follow up. He also pointed out that the Constitution had been agreed, and I shall be mentioning that in my speech, but, before I go any further, I ought, in particular, to refer to the contrast drawn about the responsibilities of Her Majesty's Government for this or that part of the world. I must remind the House that the responsibility for the internal affairs of the territory was delegated by Parliament as long ago as 1923, and since then, Southern Rhodesia has been a self-governing Colony. Even the reserved powers retained for Her Majesty's Government under the present Constitution —or "old" Constitution, as it is called— were not invoked. Therefore, there are limits beyond which I cannot go in answering the debate. However, I will give the House all the information I can and do my best to indicate that I have listened to all the constructive suggestions made, even if I cannot answer all of them at the Box this afternoon.
Several references have been made to the debate in the General Assembly. Her Majesty's Government will always heed and pay attention to the United Nations and its resolutions. This was a serious debate, as has been said, but we must continue to make apparent the exact constitutional degree of responsibility which we have in this matter. I was


asked why we did not put into effect the United Nations resolution in respect of Southern Rhodesia. For reasons which I have stated, we have made it plain that we regard this resolution as ultra vires and unacceptable. That is why we took no part in voting on the resolution. In passing, I must draw the attention of the House to certain features of the resolution which are either impracticable or untimely.
The resolution is impracticable because it calls upon us to convene another constitutional conference. This we have no power to do without the agreement of the Southern Rhodesian Government. The resolution is untimely because this new Constitution was drawn up last year with the approval of all the parties, except the Dominion Party—that is the party on the Right—as a compromise arrangement which should be given a fair trial, and this it should be given. Our information is that the Southern Rhodesian Government does not want to rescind the Constitution but wishes to make it work.
The resolution also calls for the removal of racial discriminatory legislation. This has already been done or is in process of being swept away. I am glad that several acknowledgements have been made this afternoon to the achievements of Sir Edgar Whitehead in this respect. Speaking as lately as 17th July, he said:
… it is necessary and vital that we repeal the Land Apportionment Act and racial discrimination.
He added:
Africans have got to feel they belong".
Now I come to the Constitution itself. When the Constitution was passed, the following passage occurred in the Constitutional Conference Report to which all except one European party, the Dominion Party, subscribed:
Having regard to these widely held views and aspirations it was not surprising that no group was able to secure the agreement of the Conference to the particular system it favoured. Nevertheless, while maintaining their respective positions, all groups (with the exception of the representatives of the Dominion Party) considered that the scheme … should be introduced.
That was in 1961.
There have been several references to recent developments in Southern

Rhodesia. The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), also in the spirit which has been shown by many speakers in the debate, paid tribute to development in Southern Rhodesia, but he said that in the last few years there had been signs of things going either the wrong way, or the other way. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings) said that we should take pride in the fact that the European majority, a dominant section of racial interest, should have taken the steps it did by agreeing to the new Constitution.
I think that, however much we may criticise this Constitution, we should recognise that it represents a very big change in Southern Rhodesian attitudes and a considerable advance for the Africans. What is at stake in this debate and what was discussed so freely before the audience of the world at the United Nations is whether it goes far enough. We should all agree—and this is my answer to the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland—that it was a very notable advance and was later endorsed by a referendum. It is one of the few oases in history in which a race described as dominant, although not dominant in numbers, has itself decreed that there should be changes which, I believe, in the course of years will be found to be almost revolutionary.
So we proceed from that basis and not from a basis like Algeria. I take care to say with all responsibility that I hope that we shall not draw parallels with any country, Algeria in particular, because there is a spirit in Southern Rhodesia of which great advantage can be taken. There is a multi-racial experiment in Southern Rhodesia which deserves the support and, indeed, the admiration of the House.
I do not intend to dwell on all aspects of the Constitution because my predecessors have discussed it at length. It is incredibly complicated and I sympathise very much about the forms which the hon. Member for Leeds, East waved to show me their complexity and to show what an African, for example, is obliged to understand before he is even able to take up a vote.
It is not the case that fifteen "B"-roll seats are the only seats which can be won by Africans. Secondly, what has


been very much misunderstood in studying the Constitution is the effect of the "B"-roll votes on the "A"-roll seats. The "B"-roll vote can influence "A"-roll elections up to one quarter of the "A"-roll vote. If there are two "A"-roll contenders, namely, Europeans, it may be that it is only the one who courts the African vote who will be elected. Therefore, it is perfectly possible for more than fifteen seats to be won, or at any rate influenced, by the Africans. The franchise arrangements were designed to encourage a multi-racial approach in politics, but they also have the effect, as things have developed, of making the Assembly sensitive to the changing character of the electorate. That is why I think that Mr. Nkomo and his party would be well advised to fight the elections.
What I must confess to the House as disappointing is the number of registrations. I studied these when I was in Southern Rhodesia and I watched with some interest the progress with which registration was taking place. There are only some 12,000 on the register at present, but I gather that they are continuing to come in at the rate of 300 to 500 a week. So far as I am concerned, this is the only good point about the postponement of the election, because it will enable more registration to take place up to a level which is more reasonable. I notice the earnest desire of Sir Edgar Whitehead and his administration and those who work with him in the "Build the Nation" campaign and everybody else to see as many as possible registered.
What is not realised by the United Nations, or by the House in the debates which have taken place so far, is that the Constitution contains within itself provision for change, and not in any regressive way. Any attempt to deprive Africans of the political advancement— small as some people may think it to be —under this Constitution will fail unless the Africans themselves approve such a course in a referendum in which all four racial groups have voted separately. On the other hand, a widening of the franchise can be performed comparatively easily by a two-thirds majority and I give the House this quotation about the future from Sir Edgar Whitehead himself speaking at a Press conference on 19th June when he said:

I have always visualised that, as circumstances change, so the people of this country will decide to change their Constitution, as provided in the Constitution.
If we are to look with hope on the future, we must have some regard to the educational and financial considerations upon which the franchise was based. The hon. Member for Leeds, East was bind enough to refer to a speech of mine in which I referred to education. I do not think that it has been sufficiently realised what a great drive forward in education has been made in Southern Rhodesia. Sir Edgar Whitehead said the other day that 95 per cent. of the African children attended the first five years of primary school. That is a considerable achievement, root only in terms of expenditure, which is gravely burdening the Southern Rhodesian Budget, but also of dedication.
What has now to be done is to increase the percentages and the scale, particularly in secondary education. That is appreciated and that is why the Southern Rhodesian Government is so anxious about the budgetary provision for education when it looks at what will be meant by adding to this very considerable primary understructure the necessary secondary superstructure without which this will not have the great meaning we intend it to have. The Southern Rhodesian Government are as aware of the desirability of this as anyone in this House.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire referred to financial matters. I only refer to this because I am looking at the prosperity angle to see, for example, how many Africans can get on the "A"-roll as things develop. The truth is that things have been developing towards greater prosperity. The gross domestic product has risen from about £173 million in 1954 to about £296 million in 1961, and during this period the average earnings of Africans increased by over half as much again. The Southern Rhodesian Government are hoping to make the minimum industrial wage double what it was in May 1960; they are the first to recognise that this is still not nearly high enough. I am glad that one hon. Gentleman referred to Mr. Abrahamson, the Minister of Labour, than whom I think there is no more efficient Minister in Southern Rhodesia.
Her Majesty's Government want to give Southern Rhodesia all the help that they can, subject to the absolutely clear constitutional and legal position, which it is no good under-estimating because it has behind it the sanction of operation since 1923, and therefore all the more force of legal opinion behind it. If it had been introduced a year or two ago, it would have been easier to ignore, but we must face the facts as we know them.
Southern Rhodesia is going through a particularly difficult period, economically, and we are anxious, therefore, that the great progress in education and rural development to which she has set her hand and upon which African advancement and well being so greatly depends should not be jeopardised. We have already offered Southern Rhodesia a £355,000 loan from the Colonial Development and Welfare Funds to assist in maintaining African educational progress, and we are at the moment sympathetically considering other ways in which we might help. Southern Rhodesia has put herself ahead of most other African countries educationally, but in a country like this real progress can come only from co-operation between the races.
Fortunately, we have recently had a long and complete speech from Sir Edgar Whitehead. In the budget debate he said this on the subject of racial co-operation:
… if there is any attempt made to reestablish white supremacy, to re-establish distinctions wholly on the ground of colour and for no other reason, then we are bound and doomed to fail. All the difference between success and failure in our venture will depend on how honest and sincere we are in carrying out the principles we preach …
That was said only a few days ago by the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia. I was therefore glad to be able to read it to the House in case hon. Members had not seen it in the Press. I was also glad to know that Sir Edgar said that he was not satisfied that there was enough contact between the races. If this is the position, and if we respect the constitutional position that arises between Her Majesty's Government and Southern Rhodesia, I come to the three questions put by the hon. Member for Leeds, East who asked what I could do.
The hon. Gentleman's second question relates strictly to what I have been saying, namely, whether influence could be brought to bear to bring Sir Edgar and Mr. Nkomo together. Any influence that can legitimately be brought to bear in that direction will be. They are already in touch, and I think that they know and respect each other. Anything that can be done by conversations between them will, I am sure, be achieved.
In his first question the hon. Gentleman asked that no further reduction in British responsibility should be undertaken unless certain advances were made in representative Government. I shall have to examine the position juridically. I see no reason why I should not examine it, but I cannot give any further answer to it today.
On the question of the detainees or restrictees—which I believe is the correct phrase because they are kept at Gokwe in a large area where they have comparative liberty of life and no guards— I should like to refer to the case of George Nyandoro. I took care to obtain information about this before answering this debate. With regard to the slipped disc from which he is suffering, I understand that he has now specifically nominated a South African surgeon from whom he is willing to receive treatment. The Southern Rhodesian authorities will allow him to travel to South Africa for the operation if he can get clearance from the South African Government. That is his choice, and that is the provision of the Southern Rhodesian authorities. He seemed not very inclined to consult a Federal doctor. The word "Federal" is very often a naughty word, but I should like to pay tribute to the standard of the doctors and their knowledge of medicine in the area known as the Federation, which one always has to describe with great care. Nevertheless, he has made up his mind, and I hope that this will mean that he will get relief from his disability.
The hon. Member for Leeds, East referred to a speech that I made on 10th July. While that speech does not come entirely under the umbrella of this debate, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned it I should like to say this in regard to it, and in regard to any reactions which there may have been among African leaders or anybody else. The


hon. Gentleman was kindly in his reference and interpretation, and I should like to follow it by saying that on 10th July I had no intention of giving the impression that any final decisions had been reached. I adhere to the general statement that I made in the House on 8th May, to which I stuck throughout my tour of Central Africa, and to which I stick now.
My advisers have reached the area of Central Africa and have started their tour. I think that it will be a thousand pities if those who are passionately interested, as the African leaders are, in their own future and in the future of the country they love, are not willing to meat my advisers and give them their views so that when they return I can have a dispassionate view. I repeat now that no final decisions have been made, and that therefore they are perfectly at liberty to see the advisers and give their opinions so that I can sort them out at leisure. It is too difficult a subject to rush into or make decisions on without great reflection. The fact that the hon. Gentleman referred to this had given me the opportunity of saying that.
The Southern Rhodesians are out to achieve a non-racial society. Without external pressures bearing down on them I believe that they will achieve this. That is why I have been concerned about the tone of the United Nations debates. I do not doubt the sincerity of many of the countries taking part in them, or the sincerity of their observations. I met the Foreign Minister of Nigeria and several others who took part in the debate and no one could possibly doubt their sincerity or their great knowledge of this complex problem which astounds me after the amount of time and thought that I have given to it. But there are some, particularly the Communist bloc, who see in this subject a magnificent opportunity for causing trouble.
For countries who do not know Central Africa and have no contact with it and no contact with those who live there, there is the danger of falling into the trap of over-simplification of the problem. Account must be taken in Southern Rhodesia not only of the fact that there is what is called a European minority, but that a special form of experiment, the multi-racial one, is being

worked out. I am so keen to see the African parties taking part in the elections that my main fear is that the United Nations resolution can do real harm in hardening attitudes, in encouraging intransigence, and in widening the gap between the races. I hope that this debate, on the other hand, while taking account of the difficulties and the effort that will be needed to surmount them, will do something to forward rather than hold back a great experiment.

Orders of the Day — BIRMINGHAM MENTAL HOSPITAL COMMITTEE (FORMER CHAIRMAN)

6.20 p.m.

Mr. Kenneth Robinson: It is characteristic of our proceedings that we are apt to switch abruptly from considering the constitutional future of a nation to the personal problems of an individual, but the House never rates the latter type of debate any less important on that account. I am raising today the Rubery Hill inquiry, and doing so not only as a personal case. I am concerned with the injustice suffered, as I believe, by Mr. David Rhydderch, the central figure in the controversy, but I am no less concerned with the wider implications for the hospital service and beyond.
I believe that profound issues of public policy are involved in this matter, and the purpose of the debate is to ensure that never again should a layman, who has devoted himself voluntarily, and totally without reward, to the public service, and against whom no malpractice is alleged, be subject to the kind of prolonged ordeal, the financial hazards and the public humiliation that Mr. Rhydderch has undergone. This is a complex story, and we have not a great deal of time. I shall therefore compress my remarks as much as possible.
The bald facts are that last September the medical committee—all the doctors working in the hospitals concerned—of Birmingham No. 6 Group, comprising two mental hospitals—Rubery Hill and Holly Moor—passed a vote of no confidence in the chairman of the hospital management committee, Mr. Rhydderch, who happens also to be vice-chairman of the hospital board.


This resolution was communicated to the right hon. Gentleman, and in January of this year he ordered a public inquiry under Section 70 of the National Health Service Act into the differences between the parties leading up to the medical committee's vote of no confidence.
This inquiry lasted for fourteen days. It is estimated to have cost about £12,000, and its findings led to the drastic action of breaking up the hospital group concerned and its management committee with it, to the Chairman's resignation, and to the right hon. Gentleman's refusal to reappoint him to the regional board.
I want the House to consider, first, the Minister's actions in setting up an inquiry, then the nature of the inquiry itself and the findings embodied in the report and then, perhaps, the wider and more general implications of the matter. First, I take the right hon. Gentleman's actions. If a voluntary member of a hospital board or management committee is unsuitable for his appointment, either from excessive zeal or the lack of it, or for any other reason, his term of office is three years only, and it would be quite appropriate not to reappoint him at the expiry of that term. This is the normal, quiet, decent way of getting rid of such people. It is done every year in every region, in hundreds of cases.
Mr. Rhydderoh served on the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board and as chairman of its hospital management committee for fourteen years. During that time his achievements, not least in getting his hospital modernised—and everybody agrees that they sorely needed it at the appointed day—were very considerable. If the differences to which this inquiry related were so long-standing; if the tensions between Mr. Rhydderch and his medical staff were so serious and, indeed, if the chairman possesses all the failings of character that the report alleges, how did he come to be appointed no less than four times by successive Ministers of Health to the regional board and no less than four times by the regional board to the chairmanship of the management committee? On the assumption—which I do not necessarily accept—that the com-

mittee of inquiry was fair in its assessment of Mr. Rhydderoh's character and actions over the past ten years, then the Ministers concerned and the Regional Board are guilty of grave errors of judgment in reappointing him four times each. If, on the other hand, the committee's assessment is unfair, Mr. Rhydderch has suffered the grossest injustice.
The right hon. Gentleman may ask how he was to know what was going on in the Birmingham Region. I would reply by saying that he has ample facilities for knowing what goes on in any hospital region, and if there is something going seriously wrong it is his duty to know. He has his regional officers, who are quite entitled to attend any board meetings or management committee meetings in the areas to which they are assigned, and they, at any rate, should have had an inkling of the situation. The regional board should have had more than an inkling. Yet Mr. Rhydderch received continuously, over all these years, what were, in effect, renewals of confidence on the part of all concerned.
I believe that it was widely known that Mr. Rhydderch was apt to tread on a few toes here and there, but that this was regarded as a small price to pay for the dynamic energy and enthusiasm which he brought to his job as chairman. Those qualities, at least, are not in dispute. The committee of inquiry itself— counsel on both sides, and the doctors— paid generous tribute to his energy and the hard work that he put into his job.
Therefore, if, and to the extent that, Mr. Rhydderch was responsible for the situation that ultimately blew up in the Minister's face last autumn, I say that that situation could and should have been avoided. But it was not avoided, and the Minister was faced with the demand by a cabal of doctors for some action by him. The resolution of no confidence was sent to the regional board and communicated to the Minister. But, in addition, Dr. Mathers, medical superintendent of Rubery Hill Hospital and the leader of this group of doctors, wrote a personal letter to the Minister which contained at least one very serious allegation—that of the irre-sponsible use of public funds.
Clearly, at this point something had to be done: I grant the Minister that. The next step taken seems to have been not an unreasonable one in the circumstances. The regional hospital board —almost certainly after full consultation with the Ministry—agreed to institute an inquiry. That would be quite a normal procedure in a situation of this kind. It would be a private inquiry. Three members of the board were chosen to constitute this inquiry—the then Chairman, Sir Edward Thompson; the present chairman, Sir Arthur Thomson, and the Lord Bishop of Lichfield.
Mr. Rhydderch was quite agreeable to this course of action, but the doctors were not. They are apparently unwilling to trust the impartiality of this trio of board members, which seems to be a little odd, in view of their eminence and distinction. But by this time the whole matter was in the hands of the Medical Defence Union, and, acting on their solicitors' advice, the doctors refused to accept the regional board inquiry. What they wanted was a public showdown.
It was at this point that the right hon. Gentleman took a fatally wrong stop. He gave way to the doctors. I want to know why he did not stand firm. He had already agreed to a perfectly reasonable inquiry into the differences that had arisen. Why was not he prepared to stand firm on that? Why did he have to give way? I hope that he will tell us.
He did order, under the vary wide powers conferred on the Minister of Health by Section 70 of the National Health Service Act an outside inquiry into the differences which had arisen between the chairman and the medical committee leading up to the passing of the no confidence resolution and any matters subsequently connected therewith, and a committee of three was duly appointed presided over by a Queen's Counsel.
After a time the statement of case was produced on behalf of the doctors. It comprised a list of 41 charges, going back nearly ten years in time. By fax the greater part of these charges ware incredibly petty and trivial. There were allegations of discourtesy and rudeness. A few of them alleged dictatorial conduct on the part of the chairman, failure to consult the doctors and interference

in matters which were allegedly within the medical sphere. There was nothing whatever about the misuse, or irresponsible use, of public money. I believe that the right hon. Gentleman, even at that stage of seeing the statement of case, would have been perfectly justified in rescinding his decision to hold a Section 70 inquiry. But he did not do so.
I wish now to turn to the inquiry itself. The first question I wish to ask is how it was that despite the most specific disclaimers by all concerned that it was to be anything of the kind, this inquiry degenerated very quickly into the trial of Mr. Rhydderch. I think that this was largely due to the procedure that was adopted. I hasten to add that within that procedure I have heard no criticism of the actual conduct of the hearing. I have reason to believe that the members of the committee were scrupulously fair to all concerned, but two decisions were taken which loaded the scales still more heavily against Mr. Rhydderch. The first was to hold the inquiry in public and the second to dispense with the normal rules of evidence. It seems that the Minister—perhaps he will be able to confirm this—instructed Chat the inquiry should be private if both parties wish it to be private, but that if either parties wanted the inquiry in public then it must be held in public. We know that the doctors did want a public inquiry and so it was held in public.
The report takes a rather different view of this. It deals with it as a matter of principle and I should like to quote from paragraph 189 dealing with the decision to hold the inquiry in public.
As we see it, an inquiry must be held in public unless the object of it is to be limited to conciliation. If it is plain that an accommodation must be secured, in the public interest, between two parties who are at issue, and the sole question is to find terms which are ultimately acceptable to both sides, then the bargaining is better done in private since otherwise parties may take up attitudes from which it is difficult for them to resile in public. But if more drastic action rather than conciliation could even possibly come into the picture, we think that the inquiry must necessarily be in public since there may have to be a decision against one party and that should not be done where the public do not see the process.
I feel that that is a dubious principle, anyhow. It is certainly different from the Minister's point of view. It seems


to me that conciliation must have been ruled out from the start and certainly it was ruled out the moment the decision was made to hold the inquiry in public.
As to my second objection, the dispensing with the rules of evidence, the House may think that inevitable in an inquiry of this nature. But I should like hon. Members to consider another Section 70 inquiry in the same hospital region only two years ago. It was an inquiry into the conduct of a consultant surgeon. At the outset of that hearing, the chairman, another Queen's Counsel, made it absolutely clear the ordinary rules of evidence must apply throughout the hearing as the reputation of a distinguished man was at stake. Furthermore, he went on to say that only criminal standards of proof would be accepted and that the charges against the consultant concerned would be dismissed unless they were proved beyond all reasonable doubt.
Why were safeguards which were freely given to a distinguished surgeon denied to a distinguished public servant? In his case there was no question of the rules of evidence being applied or of proof beyond reasonable doubt. There was hearsay evidence and malicious gossip recounted day after day, and the more sensational bits presented in the newspapers both local and national. In effect, what we have here is an accused man without any of the protection which an accused man quite properly receives in a court of law. I ask the right hon. Gentleman, whether, on reflection he feels that this was an appropriate procedure for investigating charges of this nature.
I should like the House to compare the risks which were assumed by the two sides to this dispute. First, the financial risk. In this case the costs of Mr. Rhydderch, who had to employ a Queen's Counsel and a junior, as the other side bad done so, amounted to more than £3,000. He is a salaried employee. He is not a man of wealth. Why could not the right hon. Gentleman at the outset have undertaken to reimburse all reasonable legal expenses incurred? I should have thought that the least he could have done, as he had placed in jeopardy a man who had given to him and to his predecessors

fourteen years of hard unpaid work in the National Health Service. In foot, the night hon. Gentleman offered £100 and then, under pressure, increased the sum to £250 plus the cost of one copy of the transcript of evidence. He did say that the matter could be subject to re-examination and I am very glad indeed that as recently as last Friday he agreed to meet substantially the whole of Mr. Rhydderch's costs. It occurs to me to wonder how much Mr. Rhydderch would have got had he not decided to debate this matter.
The fact is that for nearly six months Mr. Rhydderch has been faced with financial anxiety, on top of everything else, initiated by his somehow having to find more than £3,000. Compare the position with the doctors who initiated this whole affair. They, of course, had no anxiety at all on this score. They had nothing to lose because, automatically, their case was handled by the Medical Defence Union Which would meet all legal expenses and costs. The name "Medical Defence Union" strikes a rather curious note in this connection. I should have thought that it was a medical prosecuting union in this instance.
That is not the only type of risk incurred by someone in the case such as this. There is the other type of risk, the risk to reputation and to position. Here, too, for Mr. Rhydderch everything was at risk and in the event he found that his public reputation was systematically undermined in the full gaze of the public. His character was largely destroyed by the report and his career as a distinguished voluntary public servant was brought to an ignominious end. Mr. Rhydderch lived for the hospital service and to that extent he lost all.
Had the doctors no fears for their position or career, had the case gone against them? Certainly, I think that they had little cause to fear. It is well-nigh impossible for a consultant to be removed from his post in the National Health Service whatever the circumstances. On the few occasions when it has been attempted, the Regional Board concerned had usually been instructed by the Minister at the time to reinstate the consultant. Of course, it is perfectly right that consultants and other doctors in the hospital service should have job security. But there are those who think


that the degree of security which they enjoy is quite fantastic. Perhaps the House would consider this matter when we come to the happenings after the report was published.
I now come to the report itself. I do not want to make any bones about it, Mr. Rhydderch gets a mauling from the committee of inquiry. After recognising the fine work that he has done for the hospital—it could hardly do less than that—the committee devotes pages to his alleged character failings, to his unconstitutional methods, his domination of the hospital management committee and of those around him. It concluded that the group must be broken up and that he should not continue as oh airman. In fact, the day that the report was published, Mr. Rhydderch resigned his chairmanship without being asked to do so. The Minister has not reappointed him to the regional hospital board.
The doctors received somewhat different handling from the committee of inquiry. True, the report says that there wore faults on both sides. But it then goes on to devote precious little space by comparison to the faults of the doctors, no reference at all to the undoubted fact that it was a deliberate conspiracy laid by Dr. Mathers to get rid of the chairman and destroy him in full public view. There is, it is true, a sharp rebuke about the conduct of the annual meeting at which the vote of no confidence was passed, but that is about all, at least until we come to the supplementary report. I deal with that now.
After the main hearing was completed, Dr. Mathers decided to deal with the one colleague who had stepped out of line. This is Dr. Orwin, who had originally voted and then saw the statement of case and immediately withdrew his support from the vote of no confidence to give evidence during the hearing on behalf of Mr. Rhydderch. When the hearing was over, Dr. Mathers wrote a most extraordinary letter to Dr. Orwin asking him to resign from the medical committee on which all the doctors served and threatening to move his expulsion from the committee if he refused to resign.
This letter was brought to the right hon. Gentleman's notice and very correctly since it came within the terms of

reference, he referred the matter to the committee of inquiry. The committee was reconvened and issued a supplementary report, dated 31st June, a fortnight after the main report. After, I think, gratuitously questioning the motives of those who very properly brought this attempt at victimisation to the right hon. Gentleman's notice, the report condemns Dr. Mathers in the roundest terms. It states, in paragraph 26:
We are of the opinion that Dr. Mathers' action was wholly unjustified, was uncharitable, showed vindictiveness towards a colleague, and was motivated by the desire to have him removed from the committee. We find that he acted irresponsibly, failed to realise what was due from anyone in his position as Medical Superintendent or to have due regard to the consequences of his action. We are particularly perturbed about this because we think that, with Dr. Mathers' background and responsibility his action was all the more reprehensible.
In paragraph 29 the report stated:
There is nothing whatever in our previous report from which we wish to retract in any way.
Is it conceivable that a man who could act in such a manner was as relatively free from responsibility for the tensions and differences with the chairman as the main report suggests? Indeed, could anyone but a weak and passive chairman have co-operated satisfactorily with such a man?
Make no mistake, Dr. Mathers was the ringleader in this conspiracy and he dominated the medical committee just as surely as Mr. Rhydderch dominated the management committee. How did this belated revelation of his character and motivations fail to modify one iota the committee's assessment of blame for the situation that it was inquiring into? It is at this point that one feels that the objectivity of the committee might be called in question. What happened to Dr. Mathers following this scathing condemnation?
He has been very understandably asked to resign the post of medical superintendent by the regional hospital board. He has refused. I understand that the board as either unable or unwilling to press the matter further or to do anything about it. So we have a man who is "vindictive, uncharitable, irresponsible", I use the committee's words, "left entrusted with the care of 900 mentally sick people." Is that a


situation which the right hon. Gentleman feels happy about, and if he does not what does he propose to do about it?
I return to Mr. Rhydderch. I should make it dear that I have never met Mr. Rhydderch, although I am a member of a regional hospital board and inevitably I have heard of him from time to time. I know of the good work which he has done for the mental hospitals under his care. I have read most, although not all, of the 600,000 words of the transcript of this hearing. It is clear to me that Mr. Rhydderch is a man of great energy, drive and imagination, absolutely devoted to the hospitals that he served. We do not have too many people in the hospital service with these qualities. But, also, I think that it is clear that in some respects he had the defects of these qualities.
I must accept that sometimes he was impatient, intolerant, perhaps overbearing. Probably tact was not his outstanding virtue, but if these weaknesses unfit him for the offices that he held, surely something better was due to him for the fourteen years unrewarded sweat and toil which he put in, than this. I do not believe that he should have been dragged by the right hon. Gentleman through the travesty of a judicial process, defending himself against hearsay evidence and malicious gossip in the full hearing of the public Press.
What I am chiefly concerned about now is the effect of this unhappy affair on the whole hospital service and the even wider repercussion on voluntary service generally. Anyone who has served on a regional hospital board must know how hard it is to find suitable people for hospital management committees, who are interested in hospitals and who are willing and able to give the very considerable amount of time necessary for no reward at all. We need some 5,000 of them at any one time.
Does the Minister think that this has made it any easier to get these people in the future? Why should people undertake voluntary duties if they see as their reward at the end of the road a public trial of their character and their possible humiliation? Another unhappy repercussion of this will be the effect on the

relations between doctors and voluntary management. This relationship is always a delicate one. I would have thought that it should be simple and straightforward; but it is not. The line between clinical and administrative responsibility is a fairly clear one, although not always in absolute terms even here. I think that if Mr. Rhydderch transgressed seriously over that line he was at fault. Particularly in mental hospitals, the line between medical and non-medical responsibility is far less sharply drawn. There is a great area where inevitably responsibilities overlap.
For example, a hospital management committee is empowered to discharge a patient against the advice of the medical superintendent or the responsible consultant. It says very much for the good sense and mutual tolerance of both voluntary members of committees and the medical profession that serious difficulties arise so seldom, but here and there there are doctors who resent the existence of these committees and the serious situation which we have been discussing this evening has happened before.
Indeed, this is not the first time that a no-confidence note on the chairman has been passed by doctors. I remember a very similar case, but that ended in some doctors resigning from a hospital management committee. It is the sort of situation which is most likely to arise if there is a particularly active and vigorous chairman of the management committee or where there are particularly inert and ineffectual medical staff. This is not the first time that a group of doctors set out to get rid of the chairman of a management committee, but it is, so far as I am aware, the first time that they have succeeded and I think that it was a black day for the hospital service.
I do not regard the voluntary element in hospital administration as something extraneous, something that perhaps impedes progress like the fifth wheel of a coach. I see it as something essential and integral, and I believe it was always intended so to be. It is one of of the two democratic safeguards of the National Health Service, the other being the right hon. Gentleman's answerability to the House of Commons. It is something to be cherished by any Minister of Health and its authority reinforced


wherever possible. In cases of doubt, in all but clinical matters the voluntary element must prevail, or we open the doors to syndicalism.
Our complaint against the Minister is that he has dealt a damaging blow at the principle of democratic voluntary control for hospital services by demonstrating for all to see that a determined cabal of professional men can secure the removal of a lay chairman that they dislike. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman has learned the right lesson and drawn the right moral from this miserable story and that neither he nor his successors will ever again deal with such a situation in this way.

6.52 p.m.

Mr. Leslie Seymour: I am a member of the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board. I have also been chairman of the management committee of a hospital concerned with mental deficiency. Therefore, I have some knowledge of the running of a hospital and the connection between members of the committee and the medical staff. It can be truly said that in all committees from time to time there must be differences of opinion— differences of opinion between the members of the committee and the chairman, differences of opinion between the committee and the staff. These differences of opinion, if properly ventilated and discussed and settled amicably, can lead only to progress in the hospital.
However, in the case of Rubery and Hollymoor these were not differences of opinion. They were differences between persons, a difference in personalities, where those on one side could not synchronise with those on the other. Harmony in a mental hospital is particularly important, because the staff and all the workers have to work in close confines. The differences between the chairman of the committee and the members of the hospital staff have gradually grown during the last ten years. They started in a small way and gradually increased to such an extent that the members of the general medical staff, together with the secretary of the hospital group, decided that it was necessary for them to submit a report to the committee.
There are two sides to every question. I listened with great sympathy to the speech of the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson). It is true that three members of the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board, after a complaint by Dr. Mathers and the secretary that Mr. Rhydderch refused to accept their report and had it expunged from the minutes at one of their meetings, took a very serious view about this. Three members of the regional hospital board who are colleagues of mine on the board offered to assist in coming to a settlement. It is true that Dr. Mathers, acting on behalf of the G.M.C., said, "No, we do not wish the chairman and his colleagues to sit in judgment on one of their colleagues, and in particular the deputy-chairman of the board".
It was for that reason that they wrote to the Minister and asked for an inquiry to be set up. Unfortunately, all the grievances were made public. However, if there are grievances of a serious nature in a nationalised service surely it is batter for the benefit of the public itself that it should know the true facts. I was very pleased to see that at least the facts would be made public and this smouldering bonfire which had been going on at Rubery and Hollymoor for nearly ten years would be brought out into the open.

Mr. Donald Chapman: The hon. Member says that there was a smouldering bonfire going on for nearly ten years. He has also told us that he is a member of the regional hospital board. Does he honestly come to the House and say Chat he knew that this bonfire had been going on for nearly ten years but as a member of the board the had done nothing about it?

Mr. Seymour: As a general rule, one does not tackle a fire until it bursts into flame. If it is smouldering, it starts at a very small point and gradually spreads. It is not the right of a regional board to interfere in the details of a hospital management committee in differences of opinion. It is the hope of the board that at least the members will have sufficient sense to settle it themselves.
The inquiry has been held and the reports have been made public. One Chang which is rather outstanding is the


final conclusion on Mr. Rhydderch and the methods which were operated. The trouble with Mr. Rhydderch was not that he was inefficient in any way. I agree that he gave up considerable tame. He was enthusiastic. He did a lot for the Service. His trouble was that he wanted to do too much. He wanted to do the job of everybody else in the hospital and refused to let them do it.
Paragraph 87 of the Report says this of Mr. Rhydderch:
(1) that he acted as a manager-chairman instead of as chairman,
(ii) that he assumed direction of all activities, including some which were clinical,
(iii) that he failed to establish adequate communications between the professional staff, the administrative staff and the H.M.C.,
(iv) that he prevented certain of the Group officials, that is, the medical superintendent and the Group secretary, from performing their allotted functions. …
What dearer evidence could there be of a man who was doing too much?
The most important conclusions reached in the report are, first, that there was no conspiracy by the doctors against Mr. Rhydderch. The passing of the resolution of no confidence was the culmination of a series of incidents which had caused the doctors disquiet. Also practically all the allegations made by the doctors were found to be substantiated. The committee of inquiry, in paragraph 136, clearly regarded the attempt by Mr. Rhydderch to alter the administrative machinery and his resistance to any ventilation of complaints about this matter as one of the most important parts of the inquiry.
The hon. Member for St. Pancras, North said that Mr. Rhydderch trod on the toes of some of the staff. I think those were the words he used. Let us see what he did and whether hon. Members consider that he was treading on the toes of the staff. In September, 1961, the chairman caused or permitted a supply sub-committee to be formed. This committee was for the purchasing of commodities for the hospital, including the supply of drugs. Yet no member of the G.M.C. was appointed to that committee.
In 1957 he caused or permitted a new dormitory to be constructed at Rubery

without consultation with the G.M.C. or even taking the medical superintendent of Rubery into consultation concerning it. He caused two villas to be built at Hollymoor without consultation with the medical committee. Finally he caused or permitted the deputy matron's office at Hollymoor to be scheduled for conversion to a chiropody department without prior consultation with the committee or the medical superintendent.

Mr. Leslie Hale: Every one of them an improvement.

Mr. Seymour: That may be so, but the chairman of the committee should at least act in the orthodox manner, and the proper manner is to consult the medical superintendent of the hospital where these improvements, desirable as they may be, were to take place.

Mr. Hale: The hon. Member talks about the orthodox manner. The National Health Service was introduced only a year or two before the incidents of which he is speaking occurred. There is no orthodox manner. There is evidence that the people who asked to be consulted about plans admitted that they did not understand plans. There was a desperate need for improvement of the services in Birmingham. The chairman got them. He never missed a meeting. He had unanimous support from the board year after year. What was the hon. Member doing all this time? What did he do to help? How many meetings did he attend? How often did he express dissent about these urgent steps?

Mr. Seymour: These improvements were made at Rubery and I was one, as chairman of the finance committee, who voted against the increase for modernisation and improvements for which Mr. Rhydderch was asking, because he was having more than his share of the "mental millions".

Mr. Denis Howell: He was too big for the hon. Gentleman and for the committee.

Mr. Seymour: That may be the opinion of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell).
Here are some of the other things which he tried to do and which are


really the responsibility of other members of the department He gave instructions to the heads of departments to write direct to him, as chairman, on staff matters such as promotions and appointments of staff. Was that his duty or the duty of the medical superintendent? All requests for facilities at the hospital for outside bodies were to be addressed to him personally. Surely they should have been addressed to the secretary. On the appointment of the nurses' home warden by the chairman, the lady was told that she would be responsible direct to the chairman. Are those duties which he should have undertaken? Surely this is ample proof of what I have already said, that Mr. Rhydderch's trouble was that he tried to do too much and took responsibility from other people.
The finance officer, another important officer, was unable to carry out his functions properly. He was unable to carry out some of his duties and, in fact, neither he nor the finance committee ever saw tenders until after one of them had been accepted. No one ever made any recommendation or comment to the H.M.C.
This is the other side of the story. The report of the committee points out quite cleanly that as the committee was satisfied with Dr. Mathers, it was also satisfied with Mr. Hurst, the group secretary. The committee decided that Dr. Mathers was justified in going beyond normal constitutional procedure in asking the Minister to hold an inquiry. The committee said in the supplementary report that Dr. Mathers' action towards Dr. Orwin was Wholly unjustified, but it went on to say something which the hon. Member did not say. It said that if Dr. Mathers was to continue to hold the post of medical superintendent he must develop a greater sense of responsibility or restraint in his conduct towards others. That is proof that not only Mr. Rhydderch but Dr. Mathers was also criticised. He has not been there ten years.

Mr. Hale: Oh, yes, he has.

Mr. Seymour: The previous medical superintendent of that hospital resigned before it was necessary for him so to do because he could not agree with the chairman.

Mr. Hale: The hon. Member is deliberately misleading the House. I regret having to use those words. He knows there were two hospitals. Dr. Mathers was at all relevant times on the staff of one or the other. In 1952 he was deputy medical officer at Hollymoor. The events which concern this inquiry raised charges at Hollymoor and Rubery and a whole continuous series of events in every one of Which Dr. Mathers in one capacity ox another was involved. The hon. Member should not say things like that.

Mr. Seymour: I stand corrected. It is true that Dr. Mathers was deputy director at Hollymoor before he came to Rubery. With regard to Mr. Rhydderch, as I have said, he was too energetic. He did not permit other people to do their work properly, and as a result he clashed with most people who were employed there. But he is a man of many good points.

Mr. Charles Pannell: Do not be so patronising.

Mr. Seymour: I am not being patronising. I am making a statement. He is a man of great energy and determination and spares no personal effort in all that he undertakes. Knowing him and the hard work he has done, I would also pay my tribute to him for the work he did at Rubery. He has never done this work for his own profit but always for the good of the hospital. He has resigned, but I hope that in the future some other position will be found for him where his unlimited energy may be used to the benefit of the community.
I was also pleased to read in the newspapers last Friday that the Minister was contributing a sum of £3,000 towards Mr. Rhydderch's expenses, but I am of opinion that the Minister had this in mind all the time. [Interruption.] How could he say how much he would pay until he knew what it cost? How could he say "Yes" until Mr. Rhydderch made application?
As to the future of this hospital management committee, I emphasise that these two hospitals, Rubery and Hollymoor, are adjacent and they care for the same sort of patients and they have many common services. Because of this, and because I do not want to


see the group split up, I hope that the Minister will accept the second recommendation of the committee of inquiry and join both hospitals to another group. The committee suggested either splitting them and putting them in two other groups or joining them both to another group. Knowing the hospitals as I do, and knowing that one major physical hospital will in the future be located in the grounds of Rubery, I hope that the Minister will consider putting both these hospitals with another to form another group.

Mr. Charles A. Howell: Will the hon. Gentleman risk his reputation by becoming chairman of the committee to take over these hospitals?

Mr. Seymour: I have already offered my services as chairman. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I have been chairman of a mental hospital committee for many more years than Mr. Rhydderch, and I can honestly say that the officers worked in complete harmony with me, to their great credit.
If this hospital management committee is disbanded, two consequences will follow. The senior officers will lose their jobs. Why should the finance officer and the secretary lose their jobs when they were prevented from doing the work which they ought to have done? Secondly, the members of the hospital management committee will be dispersed. I hope, therefore, that these two hospitals will stay together and that other hospitals will be joined to them in order to make them a reasonable group.
Under the guidance of a new chairman, with the help of the members of the management committee who have given many years of voluntary service to hospitals, and with the co-operation of the doctors, the lay staff and all the nurses—I am sure that they will work together if they have a chance—these two hospitals can function to the credit of the National Health Service.

7.12 p.m.

Mr. Denis Howell: I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in this debate. First, I think that I ought to declare my interest,

though it is not a financial one. Mr. David Rhydderch has been a personal friend of mine for very many years. He is the treasurer of my union. Like the committee of inquiry, I have had ample opportunity to judge his character. Perhaps the House will make allowance for some of the things which I may say. It will have to judge me, and I shall not mind if the House does not, perhaps, accept all my judgments of the situation.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Seymour) made one of the most contemptible speeches which it has been my Jot to hear in the House for a long time. Before I come to him, I ought to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) on his magnificent statement of the case. I am sorry that my anxiety to get at the hon. Member for Sparkbrook caused me for a moment to overlook that. My hon. Friend made a very fine speech. Much of it I should have liked to have said myself. No doubt, the House will be delighted to learn that what my hon. Friend said will enable me to shorten my own speech considerably.
To return to the hon. Member for Sparkbrook, throughout all the years he has been a member of the regional hospital board he has had one of the worst attendance records of any member, yet now he has the effrontery to suggest that he ought to assume chairmanship of the new hospital group. Perhaps we need not worry too much about the hon. Gentleman; but I will put this point to him. My Rhydderch is accused of not carrying out the form of democracy in his committee. There is a form of democracy in the regional hospital board. What did the hon. Member for Spark-brook do to ensure that the trappings of democracy were anything more than a matter of lip-service on the regional hospital board? He has already admitted, in answer to a most penetrating interjection, that during the ten years while the fire was smouldering he did nothing at all about it.
The members of the regional hospital board never adequately discussed this matter, yet they are in law the employers of the doctors. The doctors contemptuously ignored the regional hospital board. The committee of three appointed by the regional hospital board was


not composed of nincompoops, not people like the hon. Member for Spark-brook, but was composed of elevated persons, Professor Sir Arthur Thomson, Sir Edward Thompson the previous chairman, and the Lord Bishop of Lichfield. If one had gone to every regional hospital board in the country one could hardly have found such a galaxy of talent. When these three members of the board attempted to intervene in the matter, they were contemptuously swept aside by the doctors, and the Minister condoned it. What the Minister did in condoning this was to say that, even though the doctors are employed by the regional hospital board they, the doctors, should decide whether or not they should treat with their employers. That is one of the serious aspects of the matter which we have to consider.
The hon. Member for Sparkbrook said that the committee of inquiry came down against Mr. Rhydderch and found most of the charges proved. It said no such thing. In paragraph 8, page 3, of its main report, the committee said:
For reasons which we shall give later, we do not regard the incidents set out in the formal Case and Answer to be the real difficulty in this matter".
Those were the 41 charges.
They are symptoms of the basic trouble which lay below the surface. We think it best to deal with these symptoms first, which will take up a considerable section of the report since there were originally 41 of them, and then deal with the root difficulty which, in our opinion, they reveal.
The committee then says:
But first we think it right to say something of the characters "—
the House will note that it is "characters", in the plural—
as revealed before us, of the principal persons involved.
My intervention during the hon. Gentleman's speech was closely relevant. I said that Mr. Rhydderch was too big for the people with whom he had to deal, certainly far too big for the doctors who did not like the great speed of change. I can give personal testimony, as a member of a hospital management committee and someone who has been in every mental hospital in the West Midlands in the course of an investigation into mental health services, that there has been greater change, greater modernisation and more dramatic im-

provement in these two hospitals under Mr. Rhydderch's control than there has been in any other hospital in the Midlands. Whatever anyone may say in this debate or at any inquiry, those achievements stand for all time and cannot be denied.
After saying that it would deal with the principal characters, the committee fell into the same error as did the regional hospital board and the members of the hospital management committee because it devoted five foolscap pages of its report to dealing with the character of Mr. Rhydderch but did no more. The members of the committee of inquiry were so overwhelmed by his character that they forgot to deal with anyone else's character. Although they began by referring to "characters" in the plural, it was only with "character" in the singular that they dealt in their report. They were as overwhelmed and as captivated by Mr. Rhydderch as most people who have known or worked with him have been.
I apologise to the House if my speech becomes somewhat jumbled. I have a good deal to say and I had it all ordered, but so much has been said that I want to avoid repetition. If I have one or two natural breaks, I hope that the House will forgive me.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) says, this matter goes back a long time. There was the Hollymoor case. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, East is very interested in this case, and I do not wish to say too much about it because I hope that he will have the opportunity of saying a few words. This girl of tender years, fourteen or fifteen years of age, should never have been in this mental hospital. Mr. Rhydderch came along one day and said, "What on earth is this girl doing here? This is the last place in which she should be. She should be moved to a more suitable place" The doctors, led by Dr. Mathers—at least Dr. Mathers, together with Dr. Ross, was involved in this—hummed and hawed, and three months later Mr. Rhydderch was amazed to find this unfortunate girl still at the hospital.
Mr. Rhydderch, to his great and eternal credit, became rather annoyed about this. At that stage, when the


matter had come before this House, the doctors wanted to have her certified as a mental defective, a moral defective. Mr. Rhydderch, to his credit, refused to have anything to do with that. He said that it was monstrous and, in his experience, wrong for a girl of that age to be where she was. Under the law, as it was then—I am not sure what it is now —hospital management committees decided questions of certification, and Mr. Rhydderch and his committee decided that this girl should not be certified. In a very few days, after the case had been raised publicly at the instance of Mr. Rhydderch, the girl was taken out of that hospital and moved to a more suitable place.
The end of the story is this. The girl is now married and she has children. Mr. David Rhydderch has been proved right and the doctors of Hollymoor proved wrong. The whole of this business goes back to the Hollymoor girl's case. Here are some doctors who never forgave a lay chairman for being right on a matter which, at that time anyway, was their responsibility.
We in the Midlands know something about this matter. We were staggered when these doctors passed their "no confidence" motion. This gives a clue to the sort of men with whom we are dealing. Not once during the ten years that, according to the hon. Member for Sparkbrook, this matter was smouldering did these doctors raise this matter on the hospital management committee on which they sat. The hon. Member for Sparkbrook says that things were done about which they were not consulted, but what were these doctors doing on the hospital management committee? Why did they not open their mouths? Perhaps they did not have a thought in their heads. Perhaps their attitude was completely negative. But what sort of men sit for ten years on a committee and then say, "Although the fire has been smouldering for ten years, we have not said a word about this during the whole of that time"?—and the hon. Member for Sparkbrook asks us to take this matter seriously! I have never heard such arrogant nonsense in all my experience in this House, although I admit that I have not been here as long as some.
These doctors pass a vote of "no confidence", yet never say a word about it to the members of their committee or to the regional hospital board. Instead, they send straight to the Minister and say, "We want a public inquiry and nothing less." They treated with contempt the three illustrious members of the committee set up to deal with the matter.

Mr. Seymour: Surely it is true that the doctors did present a report. It went to the committee and Mr. Rhydderch would not accept it. He had the representation expunged from the minutes. Had it gone to the committee in the proper manner, it would have been sent on to the regional board.

Mr. Howell: I do not know how to deal with the hon. Gentleman. Very often he does not listen. When he does listen there is obviously so little intellectual content present that it is difficult to get things through. The point is that these doctors sent the report to their committee after they had asked the Minister for a public inquiry. Mr. Rhydderch took what I should have thought was a sensible view. At that stage, at the eleventh hour, he said, "As these men have gone directly over my head and over the regional board to the Minister asking for a public inquiry, it would be improper for this committee to consider the matter until we know what the Minister is going to say." That was a sensible attitude to adopt. It might have been argued that he was in contempt of court if he had allowed his committee to discuss the matter at that time. If I had been Mr. Rhydderch I would have told these doctors a few home-truths; but that is another matter. Where was I before that ridiculous interruption?
The most contemptible thing of all was that the Minister set up a public inquiry, as my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North said, on three very specific charges. The most important was that concerning the irresponsible use of public funds. The second charge, made in a letter to the Minister, was that Mr. Rhydderch interfered with the appointment of a consultant. The third charge, which was much the minor charge, was that there had been some rudeness to a senior nursing officer.
When the Minister is told, "There is a chairman irresponsibly using public funds", something must be done about it. But what the Minister should have done at that stage was to ask these doctors to state a case. If a charge is made against a doctor in the Health Service, it first must be established that there is a prima facie case before anything further is done. That did not happen in this case. What did the doctors do? As soon as they got their public inquiry, they dropped every one of these three charges. Not a word was heard of the charge of irresponsible use of public funds from the day that the Minister set up the inquiry, and I cannot use strong enough words to describe that sort of activity. It is quite wrong to make the grossest libel on a distinguished public man, to get a public inquiry on the basis of it and then run away and proceed to produce 41 more charges. If the hon. Member for Sparkbrook had been doing anything on his regional hospital board, he would have realised what was happening and would have said, "This is monstrous. The three original charges have gone and now 41 other charges are being brought, all of which are a tarradiddle of nonsense, tittle-tattle gossip". The Minister should never have allowed this nonsense to continue in the way that he did.
At that stage I wrote to the Minister and said, "This is getting out of hand." I have had some talks with Mr. Rhydderch's legal advisers. The Minister had offered Mr. Rhydderch £100 towards his costs. That was an indication of the fact that the right hon. Gentleman thought that this would be a small inquiry which would be completed in a day or two. But when it came to the doctor's case, 41 charges were made, going back over ten years and involving people who had retired from the Health Service and who had to be interviewed up and down the country. What an impossible financial burden this was putting on Mr. Rhydderch. Solicitors told me that it was impossible for them to meet these charges and carry on their normal duties because they were told that they had to give a reply in a very short time.
For the first time in my experience in this House the Minister refused, not only to see me—he may not have liked the

tone of my letters which probably accounts for his not seeing me—but to see the official Opposition spokesman on Health Service matters, my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North. The right hon. Gentleman refused point blank to see us in order to discuss the principles involved, the question of an adjournment and the question of costs. That was extremely lamentable.
When the chairman of the committee was written to, the secretary to the committee at the Ministry of Health wrote a letter, dated 7th February, which I wish to put on record. I know that the Minister corrected it afterwards, but I want hon. Members to judge and evaluate this for themselves. It was addressed to Messrs. Rowley, Ashworth and Co., the solicitors acting for Mr. Rhydderch, and it reads:
 Dear Sirs. Birmingham Inquiry.
Thank you for your letter of 5th February "—
that is a letter by Mr. Rhydderch's solicitors saying that they could not possibly reply to the charges in time in view of their nature and extent—
which I have put before my Chairman. I am instructed to say that in the light of the effect on the administration of the hospitals concerned, the inquiry should be held with the least possible delay. As a result of this view, which is shared by the Minister, my Committee are not prepared to postpone the date fixed for the hearing, but, if it should transpire that either your client or the Group Medical Committee has to meet allegations not fully disclosed by that time, the matter could be considered further by the Committee at the hearing.
I drew the Minister's attention to this and said that it was a terrible thing. I am not a lawyer, but the solicitors acting for Mr. Rhydderch got a letter from the Ministry, with the Minister's connivance at the lowest and his agreement at the highest, that the Commission must hold the inquiry when it suited him and not the parties to it. I do not make too much of that point.
The Minister got the committee to write and say that that was a mistake and that the phrase should never have been put in the letter. I bet it was a mistake and never should have been put in the letter, but it was. We are entitled to know more about it and to know exactly what are the relationships with the committee.
I want to quote an extract from a memorandum sent to me by the solicitors on behalf of Mr. Rhydderch so that when deciding these proceedings in future, the House will know the difficulties in which solicitors find themselves. I quote:
On 16th January, 1962, a letter from the Secretary to the Committee suggested the week beginning 12th March as the appropriate date. At that time, no one had any idea of the extent of the inquiry or how big a job it would be and, indeed, on 30th January it was hoped by the Ministry that the matter could be dealt with over a period of four days.
The statement of case from the other side, which by itself ran to ten foolscap pages and included about 35 separate charges, was not received until 2nd February. When it became apparent how big a job this was every effort was made to try and get an adjournment. The only result, as can be seen from the correspondence, was that permission was given to delay the formal reply. But every effort to get the actual date of hearing postponed failed.
In the end, instructing solicitors had one solicitor, one managing clerk, one articled clerk and three or four typists engaged almost full time attempting to get the case ready in time. It was not ready, indeed it could not be ready, at the time the inquiry opened.
The matter was further complicated by further allegations being received from the group medical committee only two or three days before the inquiry began.
As a result of all this, the inquiry began with permission from the Committee that any witnesses who were subject to recall at our request … Witnesses for Mr. Rhydderch were still being interviewed a week after the inquiry actually opened and further statements were then still being taken. In the result, the burden put upon Mr. Rhydderch and his solicitors was probably unfair".
The letter goes on clearly to say, however, that
no actual harm was done so far as the refusal to adjourn was concerned and it is difficult now to think what could have been done which was not, in fact, done, but this was only because the inquiry went on for so long that it was possible to work on Mr. Rhydderch's defence after it had opened.
I mention all this because time and again, the report states that the inquiry was surprised from time to time that such and such a line was not followed up by Mr. Rhydderch's legal advisers. They could not possibly follow up every line that was being chucked in night after night. I am not a lawyer. If that is the way we conduct our affairs, something is

seriously wrong. I am told by my legal friends, however, that it is not the way that affairs are conducted; there are matters of discovery, and so on. The way that the matter developed meant that Mr. Rhydderch was put on trial and had to answer these questions. The Committee had to answer them. There were about 41 or 51 charges. The effect of all this was to put Mr. Rhydderch on trial, whatever the Minister may say.
I come next to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North about the Shrewsbury case, which involved a doctor and which also was a matter in which I was concerned. I was not a member of the House at the time. The charge briefly was that a surgeon was getting people into a maternity hospital by charging them fees when there were no private beds and he had no right to charge them fees. Certainly, that was a serious allegation. The same Minister quite rightly agreed to set up a committee if inquiry.
That was a farce if ever there was one. The particulars had been investigated by the local C.I.D. and the regional hospital board, including Mr. Rhydderch and, so far as I know, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook, said that it was a question of fraud and not a matter for them; if money was being taken from patients for letting them into hospital when there was no right to take the money, that was false pretences. The papers went to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
After the Director of Public Prosecutions considered the matter, he said that there was not enough evidence to justify a prosecution, by which, presumably, he meant that there was not sufficient proof of guilt to justify a criminal charge, but that it was a proper case to be dealt with by an inquiry under Section 70. The Minister appointed the inquiry, which then proceeded to say that it must have proof beyond any reasonable doubt. In other words, from the moment of its being set up, the inquiry laid down criteria for onus of proof which the Director of Public Prosecutions had already said could not be satisfied. If that did not make the whole thing farcical, I do not know what did.
My purpose in raising the Shrewsbury case tonight is to quote what was said in


the report. I quote from The Times of 30th September, 1960, in amplification of what my hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North said:
The Committee says: … ' We had been well aware that the allegations are grave and could if established have the most serious consequences for the person against whom the allegations were made… Consequently we have throughout considered the facts and reached our conclusions not on a balance of probabilities but on the basis that such allegations ought to be proved with certainty and beyond reasonable doubt. We consider that the adoption of this approach is not only our duty but is vital in order that justice may be done'".
I do not complain about that, but if it is true for the doctor at Shrewsbury why is it not true for Mr. David Rhydderch? The Minister has a serious point to answer. This is double talk and a double standard in the Health Service. It is applying one set of standards to doctors and another standard under the same Minister and under Section 70 to voluntary lay people. I consider it a shocking business.
My hon. Friend has read paragraph 189 of the report and I will not repeat it. Right from the start, however, the inquiry took certain predispositions. It decided that if it was likely that it would have to deal severely with the party the inquiry should be in public and everything would be admitted. Indeed, the committee admitted everything. Mr. Rhydderch was treated in a shameful manner when we compare what happened in a similar inquiry at Shrewsbury. I ask the Minister to think about this double standard and this difference of treatment of two responsible men in the Health Service.
I now pass rapidly to the Hollymoor and Rubery Hospital Management Committee, from whom I have today received a letter. The hon. Member for Sparkbrook made great play of reading from the committee's findings that it regarded the management committee as a miserable, inefficient committee dominated by this terrible ogre of a man Mr. David Rhydderch.
The management committee asked at the outset to be legally represented, but the Minister refused this. Now, the committee is to be pilloried although it had no opportunity to defend itself. I want to put on record what the committee has said. It feels strongly about

the matter, as it is entitled to do. I have been sent this copy of a letter which has been written to Mr. Newstead, Secretary of the regional hospital board.
The strictures and intemperate language in the report of the Committee of Inquiry involving the Hospital Management Committee are deplored. The H.M.C. were not informed officially that an Inquiry was to be held; nevertheless, when they became aware of the setting up of a Committee of Inquiry, legal representation was requested by them for their Vice-Chairman"—
who was then acting on behalf of the committee—
but this was refused. The terms of reference before the Committee of Inquiry specifically referred to the differences between the Chairman of the H.M.C. and the Group Medical Committee and made no reference to the H.M.C.
The second point of the statement was:
The H.M.C. resents the statement contained in the report that its 'control had been culpably weak…' This statement does not conform to the facts.
They were never asked about this. They had no legal representation.
The H.M.C. feel very strongly that it is entitled to be consulted before the Regional Hospital Board arrived at conclusions on the future of the Hospital Group….
I want to put that on record in fairness to some distinguished men and women, and there are members in the party opposite who know them. They know they are not stooges. They are sensible men. These are sensible and honourable men, and they were not properly treated. They were treated disgracefully and I do not think that the hon. Member should have come to the House today and read out that this was a weak committee when most members of the committee were never seen by the committee of inquiry.

Mr. John Hollingworth: Was the letter signed by all the members of the hospital management committee?

Mr. Howell: This is a resolution of the hospital management committee— its considered views. There is no minority report attached to it. It is the committee's considered opinion and I put it before the House. In this country minority rule in these matters usually carries little weight, and people who find themselves in disagreement from time to time do not go round for ever letting people know they were in the minority.


I suppose that in the normal process of democracy this was the considered view of the committee.
I come to the tribunal's dilemma. I have read out already what the tribunal said about specific facts. It was quite dear to some of us that this tribunal was in this dilemma. There was nothing to show any of these Changes. They probably reasoned like this. We cannot allow it to go on as though we have not determined a balance between the voluntary chairman on the one side and sixteen doctors on the other, and the balance is a balance of convenience. Some of the sixteen doctors had only just arrived at the hospital, and some were foreigners and could not speak a word of English, but nevertheless there they were on the one side against Mr. Rhydderch, and Mr. Rhydderch had to be sacrificed to the balance of convenience. One can imagine that this tribunal took a long time over its findings, saying to itself, "How can we get out of this impasse?"
I want to make this point very dear. The doctors in their dosing speech to the tribunal said specifically through their learned counsel, "We shall refuse to work any longer with Mr. Rhydderch". This was a dictatorial ultimatum of the worst kind. This was what they said. Therefore the tribunal found itself in this position, that on balance it had better get rid of Mr. Rhydderch and keep Dr. Mathers. Unfortunately for the tribunal, in this long and sorry story—which, though the House may find it hard to believe, I am trying to keep short—the end was not to be. In fact the most interesting part was only just starting, because this wretched Dr. Mathers had a way of dealing with people he did not like and who disagreed with him. We had the case of Dr. Nicol. Dr. Nicol must have worried the inquiry because he is the Deputy Medical Officer of Birmingham, not a man of straw but a man of substance, a man of integrity. Dr. Nicol objected very strongly to what the committee was to do about Mr. Rhydderch. The committee and Dr. Mathers and the cabal said to Dr. Nicol, "Out you go". They said, "We have got to get rid of him". And Nicol went.

Mr. Chapman: Fantastic.

Mr. Howell: When Nicol had gone and the committee was finishing after sixteen long, weary days, and when everybody was fed up, and everybody was saying, "Thank goodness, it is all over, What can we do? We must have a balance of convenience "Dr. Mathers got busy. His character was not analysed by the committee but he has analysed it himself, for he wrote to Dr. Orwin. This was the man the committee preferred to Mr. Rhydderch. It said, "We have to prefer one to the other. Right, we prefer Mathers." This is what he wrote to Dr. Orwin, the one medical man who gave evidence for Mr. Rhydderch:
Dear Dr. Orwin, This is to let you know that unless I hear you have resigned your membership before then I propose to move a resolution at the next meeting of the Group Medical Committee that you be no longer admitted to membership. I hope you will appreciate that I will only take this step with reluctance, and in what I consider to be the. interests of the medical staff of the Group as a whole. Yours sincerely, James Mathers.
I had to bring that to the attention of the Minister. I pay a tribute to him. He very properly sent it back to the inquiry and said they should look at this. They castigated Dr. Mathers as a vindictive man, but this was not the end of the story because the Regional Board said that something would have to be done about it and so they asked him to resign.
But Mathers, what does he do? He does what he has done all along—cocks a snook at the regional hospital board. And the horn. Member opposite cocks a snook at the board. He tells them to go jump into the canal—or do any of the less polite things people sometimes tell other people to do. The regional board decided what they must do and that was to ask him to resign, but he is still there, having been asked to resign.
What is the Minister going to do about it? Justice demands that something be done about it. He is a man who has grossly intimidated all of his medical colleagues, and then he says, "I am not going to resign," and the board says it can do no more about it.
But that is not the end of the story because one opinion which the main report shows is that these doctors are to beware of the grave danger of discussing in their medical committee affairs which


are not medical matters. They hope that never again will this medical group committee or any other go into politics. That is what they mean in simple language.
This is one of the cardinal principles we ought to be discussing—the control of the Health Service; and the lay should predominate over the other interests in the name of democracy. The Minister has to answer that point.
The regional hospital board solemnly decided last week, after paying the most handsome tribute to Mr. Rhydderch—I will not read it out; it is all on the record in the Birmingham Post —that in future it would ask its senior administrative medical officer to sit in at all meetings of the group medical committee. Next day there were banner headlines in the Press about further local difficulties and references to the Medical Defence Union again. What has the committee decided now? It has decided that it will not accept this man, and has said that if he comes, it is not sure that there will be a meeting. That is treating the regional board, the Minister and the country with the grossest contempt. Those people are prepared to hold up the Health Service to that sort of contempt.

Mr. Chapman: I do not want to stop my hon. Friend's flow, but has he forgotten the best gem of all, which is the letter which has now been sent to all of us? After having been told in no uncertain terms to keep out of politics, they then draft a manifesto to Members of Parliament in which, with absolute arrogance, they complain about the amount of time that they have had to spend to establish the unsuitability of a certain individual, Mr. Rhydderch, already in post. If that is not arrogance in the course of the removal of that gentleman, I should like to know what is.

Mr. Howell: I assure my hon. Friend that I had not forgotten that. It was to be my great peroration. Unfortunately, he has torpedoed it.
The committee is still playing politics. The hon. Member opposite says that he wants it to carry on as a group—presumably with its little intrigues behind closed doors, and with him as chairman.

Mr. Seymour: Let us stick to the facts. I said that other hospitals should be

added, and I instanced a hospital which at some future time is to be built in the grounds of Rubery.

Mr. Howell: The hon. Member has disproved something for me today. I told some of my friends that now that the committee had got rid of David Rhydderch, I did not know who would take over as chairman and that no man in his senses would ever dream of taking on the committee with those persons in control. But the hon. Member cannot be in complete possession of his senses, because he has volunteered for the job.
We must contrast the treatment meted out here to a distinguished public servant with that meted out to the doctors, who are still there. Every day that has gone on since the inquiry finished has proved that Mr. Rhydderch was right. Day in and day out the doctors are doing their best to underline the fact that he was right. They are still playing politics, and we are entitled to know what the Minister proposes to do about it.
The tribunal says that Mr. Rhydderch is a man of absolute honesty and integrity and of tremendous achievement. Sir Arthur Thompson, chairman of the regional board, has said it. Dr. Whittaker, chairman of the regional consultative services, has paid tribute to him in glowing terms. The Minister has done his bit by agreeing, belatedly, that £3,000 of the £3,100 costs should be paid to Mr. Rhydderch. But Mr. David Rhydderch, after fourteen years' service, has had no letter to explain why he is not on the management committee. He has been got rid of, in a very unfortunate manner.
The decencies of life demand that the Minister shall take the first opportunity of putting Mr. Rhydderch back on the regional hospital board. Indeed, there is nothing in the whole story to justify taking Mr. Rhydderch off it, whatever was done about the hospital management committee. He ought never to have been taken off it. After the crucifixion—it has been a public crucifixion —there has to come the resurrection, and I hope that the resurrection of Mr. Rhydderch to his proper place in our society, irrespective of party feelings, will take place as soon as possible.
Lastly, it was said time and time again in the report that Mr. Rhydderch could


not handle men. Apparently, he could not handle Dr. Mathers. Neither can the regional hospital board. Neither can his own colleagues. Neither can the Minister. Dr. Mathers is still there in spite of all his arrogance and impertinences. If justice is to be seen to be done, it can be done only when Mr. Rhydderch is put back on the regional hospital board. I predict that as long as Dr. Mathers stays where he is there will be no peace on that committee, or on any other committee, because he is that sort of man. Mr. Rhydderch has gone and will not be there to disprove the lie that it was he who caused the trouble. There will be more trouble— there is more trouble—now that Mr. Rhydderch is not there, and it is for the Minister to face up to this point.

7.55 p.m.

Mr. Leonard Cleaver: I do not propose to keep the House quite as long as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) has done. Unlike the hon. Member and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Seymour), I have no interest in this matter to disclose.
I hope the hon. Member for Small Heath will not object to my saying that he has been putting the point of view of Mr. David Rhydderch, as he quite properly disclosed that he is his friend. One would not, of course, expect him to take a disinterested view of the matter and try to see something of the other side in those circumstances.
I believe that the House is agreed that the matter has been going on far longer than the six or twelve months to which the report has referred. I am told that it started in 1953. We may at some time discuss why the matter did not come to the fore earlier, but that is not what I wish to discuss. But it certainly has been going on for some time, and I ask the House to appreciate that, whether we like it or not, the fact that it has been going on so long is one of the reasons why it has become so urgent today and why it has become such a tragic matter.
I would point out to the hon. Member for Small Heath that in no way is Mr. Rhydderch's integrity called into question. There is no reference to his

having a good or a bad character, and I should not like anyone to think that his character was in question. There has been no question of the committee reporting on his character. He has been reported on only in regard to his right to act as chairman of these hospitals.
The hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) referred, quite rightly, to whether or not the inquiry should have been held in public. The point he started with was quite right. If there had been a possibility that some reconciliation could have been effected, it would have been far better to have held it in private. The hon. Gentleman went to the trouble of reading out from the report observations made upon this point and arguments put forward. But he stopped his quotation at a vital point. The very point that he wanted considered was considered by the inquiry. The last words of the report sum this up:
In our view this was a case where it was clear from the outset that something more than conciliation could possibly be necessary.

Mr. Howell: The inquiry had not heard a word of evidence.

Mr. Cleaver: I have it here.

Mr. Hale: They did not hear—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Robert Grimston): We cannot have two hon. Members on their feet at the same time.

Mr. Cleaver: It had been going on a long time whether hon. Members opposite like it or not and whether they consider Mr. Rhydderch right or wrong. In the circumstances of these disputes arising at the hospital, it was right that something should be done, that some inquiry should be made and that the public should know that the matter was being looked into.
No one denies that these are two most important hospitals and that the treatment of the patients in them should be of the highest order. But one cannot get the right sort of treatment in a mental hospital if the conditions are such as described in the report. Whether the hon. Member for Small Heath likes it or not, this report comes down adversely to Mr. Rhydderch practically the whole way through. In making their defence, the hon. Gentleman and


his hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North clutched like drowning men at the supplementary report. This, I agree, contains condemnation of Dr. Mathers—it is the only one—and says, quite rightly, that he should not have dome what he did.
But this trouble had gone on for a long time—far too long for a man holding his responsibility. Whether he was right or wrong he was under great stain. He was at odds with his chairman. He was harried by accusations and he was the obstacle to the chairman's power. He was subjected to great discourtesy—I will not say frightened— from time to time in the committee. Naturally, he wrote that unfortunate letter. Perhaps he should not have done so.
In this respect the hon. Member for Small Heath should have gone a little further. He should have referred to the passage in the report describing how that particular incident arose. There was another letter written to the Press and also to the Minister. The report commented:
in the circumstances, while we have no doubt at all about the soundness as principles of the principles set out in the letter of Miss Walker and to Alderman Bowen"—
to the Minister—
nor of those set out by Mr. Rhydderch in his evidence, we do not find ourselves able to accept it that these were the sole considerations behind Mr. Rhydderch's actions in informing Miss Walker and Alderman Bowen of what he had found, nor theirs in writing to you. We think that they had strongly in mind the advantage to Mr. Rhydderch's case in the main inquiry of this chance piece of very prejudicial evidence against a principal member of the party who had opposed Mr. Rhydderch in the main inquiry.
That passage should be emphasised, for hon. Members opposite have made the points put in that letter very forcefully.

Mr. K. Robinson: I am trying to follow the hon. Gentleman. Is he suggesting that it would have been better and more in the public interest if this letter of Dr. Mathers had been suppressed and not brought to the Minister's attention or to the attention of the inquiry committee? Otherwise what is the point of the hon. Gentleman's intervention?

Mr. Cleaver: Not at all. I think it was quite right that it was published, since it had been written. But only one

side has been put in all the accusations which have been made by Members opposite. It is only right that the House should know the other arguments in the report.
What has been going on? What has been the basis of the troubles in the hospitals for years? Mr. Rhydderch may be an enthusiast for building hospitals and spending money on them, when he can get it granted by the regional board. But he is not the only man in Birmingham to want to do that. The whole time, however, he wished to establish his place as dictator of this particular management committee. And when he was chairman, he was well able to do it.
Mr. Rhydderch appointed ad hoc committees to settle important questions of spending public money on extensions. That was very suitable for his purpose. If one has an ad hoc committee one does not have to refer a matter to the main committee, which does not meet very frequently. He interfered with the ordinary conduct of the staff. He wanted references made direct to him instead of through the normal channels. It is remarkable that hon. Members opposite have not mentioned that point.
Wherever there are personnel relationships involved, whether in works, office or hospital, surely the right way to make complaints and objections is to one's immediate superior. One does not call in the district organiser of one's trade union just because something is wrong with the tea. One goes to the foreman. Exactly the same principles apply to a hospital—even more so. This sort of situation has been going on for years. Medical people, like everyone else, object to it. One can understand their feelings. These men are very sensitive about such matters.
It is the same with the general policy and conduct of a hospital. No one says that some of the things should not be done but it is only right that they should be considered by the management committee. If decisions are made they should be communicated either through the proper lay member of the staff or through the medical member of the staff and so filtered down through the organisation in the proper way. That was not done in these hospitals and it suited this chairman that it should not be done.

Mr. Denis Howell: Nonsense.

Mr. Cleaver: It is not nonsense. It is fact.

Mr. Howell: Would the hon. Gentleman deal with the fact that the committee has said that it was consulted and refuses to be described in these terms by the inquiry? Why denigrate these other public servants in Birmingham?

Mr. Cleaver: The hon. Member need not make a second speech, if he does not mind, in an intervention. I will deal with that in a moment. Now I am trying to put the point that the whole trouble in these hospitals was that the chairman wanted to be autocratic, to be dictator, while at the same time he was discourteous with the people working there. This discourteous handling of various members of the staff lay at the root of a lot of the trouble over the years.
At the same time, Mr. Rhydderch had certain support on the committee. It is no good trying to avoid that conclusion. Let us take the one instance of the letter which has been so much discussed. The committee members were equally divided and the chairman decided to suppress it on his casting vote. Thus a body of people wanted to take active management of the hospital. They did their best, but they were not allowed to do so. It is not easy to restore democracy after a long period of autocratic behaviour.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath did not mention another factor of the report which was far worse than the technicalities and legalities he spoke about. This referred to the fear among some members of the staff. That can only mean that people were afraid to put their views before the chairman because they thought that he had the power either to remove them from their posts or to prevent them from getting promotion. That sort of atmosphere would not be allowed in any other organisation. One would not get it in a factory, for the trade union would protect the staff. But not in this case. With that background, one can understand why there has been trouble in these hospitals.
We must have team work in the National Health Service in order to

make our hospitals work. Whether it be the regiment, or the trade union, or the club, in all of them there must be leadership and co-operation. That is even more vital in the medical services, because when what one might call the "end product"—the patient—sees a staff which is not confident, cheerful, happy and co-operative, he very soon senses the atmosphere and loses faith, very often, in his medical advisers.
I very much regret to say that the degree of tension in the atmosphere in this psychiatric unit more than anywhere else was liable to affect the behaviour of mental patients, who are more affected by atmosphere in hospital than anyone else. The whole time the doctors and staff are trying to create a calming, therapeutic atmosphere. But in this case, as the report says,
… this is well nigh impossible under conditions created by the chairman's behaviour".
The lesson is that these valuable professional men in a hospital, whatever their job, must be relieved as far as possible of the ordinary drudgeries of administration. The committee should do its job in the proper way, be properly consulted and know that its advice is wanted. That advice should be considered, but this was not the case in this hospital, and that is the reason for the whole of the trouble.

Mr. Denis Howell: What does the hon. Gentleman know about it?

Mr. Cleaver: An hon. Member asks me what I know about it. I am trying to make out, whether he likes it or not, that this is all due to the behaviour of the chairman.
I think that the generalisations of condemnation which have been made about the committee are a little unfortunate. Some members of the committee tried to do their duty as they saw it, but, whether we like it or not, there was a faction supporting the chairman. The only thing wrong about the chairman is that he has been condemned outright in the report and has been held very largely responsible for the trouble that has been going on.

Mr. Sidney Silverman: Mr. Sidney Silverman (Nelson and Colne) rose—

Mr. Cleaver: I am sorry, I cannot give way. I do not want to take too


long, and the last speech was a very long one. It is dictatorship in this hospital which is the whole trouble, and had there not been that dictatorship, and had the hospital been conducted on normal lines, there would not have been this inquiry. The committee felt that it had not been informed. It felt that it should have had legal representation when the inquiry came, and that the chairman should have been able to take part in it. I hope that my right hon. Friend can give some reason why that was not the case.
With regard to the other problem— and it is a very big problem which comes out not only in Birmingham but in the whole country—which is the cost of an inquiry Like this, I say that, by all means, public people who voluntarily undertake work of the nature such as happened in this committee, and which may well happen in the case of other committees in the country, should be entitled to some protection, even money protection, when they have to defend themselves. At the same time, I do not think that we should be so open-handed that it should be automatic and give the impression that one can do as one Likes when one is chairman of a board, without consideration of the results at all or of the cost to the taxpayer. I was very glad to see that my right hon. Friend said that this was to be an ex-gratia payment, and I hope that means that all other cases will be considered on their merits.
Finally, with regard to the position of Dr. Mathers, I think it would be very unfair if he was compelled to retire, or even if he was removed, unless the removal meant promotion. We cannot alter the fact that the inquiry came out in his favour, and very strongly in his favour, except for the minority report. [Interruption.] I know that hon. Gentlemen opposite do not like it, but the minority report was not a majority report.

Mr. Denis Howell: The hon. Gentleman should get his facts right.

Mr. Cleaver: I have got my facts right.
It would be most unfair if a man who has been faced with all this discouragement and trouble for years in the running of a hospital should now find his

position jeopardised after an inquiry which has justified him, and find that he is being compelled to retire. It would be absolutely wrong, and I think it would prevent people who try to do what they think is right and who are even prepared to go before an inquiry, from doing so in the future. I think that we have a very important task to see that he has protection in this matter.
I have spoken for quite long enough, but, to summarise the whole position, I would add that it may well be that the still waters of the Avon run deep, but the troubled waters of this mental hospital run deeper still, and sticky mud lies at the bottom.

8.16 p.m.

Mr. Leslie Hale: The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Mr. Cleaver) finished a speech which, I hope, when he reads it tomorrow he will be ashamed of, by expressing the hope that some amendment will be made or some measures taken when inquiries of this kind are held again. I hope inquiries of this kind never will be held again. I do not want to be tempted by the inconsequences and inaccuracies of the last speech into saying anything which is not objective, because I had intended to deal with one considerable and important section of the report only.
My hon. Friend the Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson), in a magnificent opening speech, paid a perfectly fair tribute to the members of the tribunal. They listened with patience, conducted themselves with dignity and tried to be considerate to all the people, but the whole inquiry was misconceived, as almost inevitably it had to be misconceived, and I shall refer to that later. I happened to be reading yesterday a case prepared by the democratic lawyers of Brussels on the Nazi trials and the re-emergence of Nazi judges in Germany. It is surprising how these little bits of evidence, these collections of scraps of evidence, these accumulation of bits of suspicion and bits of hearsay here and bits of something there were used to send some one to the firing squad, just as Mr. Rhydderch was sent to his dismissal—to what one hon. Member opposite has said was an ignominious dismissal. I think there never was a dismissal which did a man more credit, and, indeed, the method nowadays of


making a man a Companion of Honour might have been adopted.
A night or two ago, I went to the pictures, where I usually go to get some quiet sleep. A few moments later, as I was dozing, my attention was attracted by the sort of motion that gives one notice that something is going to happen. The screen was recording that the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Wirral (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd) had taken a penny lick off all the ice cream cornets about to be sold, and the ladies who had torn up my ticket were now dressed in white coats like umpires, posed like the statue of General Smuts, and endeavouring to sell those extraordinary confections of glucose on chopsticks, which intimated to the intelligent members of the audience that the big film was about to commence. It started, as films usually do, with a long and interminable time list of the persons who have been responsible for the montage, the maquillage and the mucilage which was to follow. Then the screen was focussed on a very moving scene. We had the motor traffic going in different directions at enormous speed, while a little girl stood terrified and helpless, with no one seeking to help her at all. There was that little girl, and her face was focussed in my mind when I was reading this too long report, quite unconsciously.
We have been treated recently to some propaganda on behalf of the right hon. Gentleman. We are told that beneath that stern exterior and that neat waistcoat there beats a heart of gold, that he is the sort of man who would like to be kind to the nurses if economic circumstances would permit. We are told that, even though he may be reading Euripides at Cabinet meetings, at home he plays "Happy Families" cheerfully and chuckles over "Miss Bung, the brewer's daughter" like an ordinary individual. No one had played with the little girl except old men with their trousers down. She was not a girl of 14 and 15, but a child of 13 years and three months who went into Holly-moor. She was later described as a voluntary patient, who had been having full sexual experience for five years in this Christian country of ours. That was the little girl in whom the"blustering

Napoleonic, bouncing, brassy" chair-roan of the regional hospital board— according to his enemies—took an interest, and it was time that somebody did.
A man of 64, among others, was awaiting trial at the assizes in connection with the little girl. The News of the World, with that infinite delicacy which distinguishes its reports, would have said that he was "alleged to have committed a serious offence against her," and the little girl was found to be in need of care and protection, as indeed she was. She was sent to the child psychiatrist in Birmingham, Louise Eickhoff, who seems to have done her utmost to help. Nearly everybody tried to help. There are no villains particularly in this story. The little girl was sent to this adult mental hospital, Hollymoor.
We are told that she was not put in with the very old geriatric cases. But this little girl was sent to what in our less intelligent days we used to call a lunatic asylum and what we now call an adult mental hospital. Dr. Mathers was the deputy medical superintendent and Dr. Ross was the superintendent. All the report says—and there is nothing controversial about this—is that on the whole Dr. Ross is a rather genial figure while Dr. Mathers is a rather dominating figure. I am not trying to introduce into this story anything which is not already there, but it is a story which Dostoievsky might have conceived.
When one is going back to something that happened a long time ago, there is much to be said for relying on documentary evidence and much to be said for relying on the records of what people said at the time. The girl came to Hollymoor on 24th October when she was still being treated as an out-patient by Dr. Louise Eickhoff. Dr. Ross said that he thought that she was a psychopathic personality, which is probably quite true—so am I for that matter—and that is about all that was said.
The next communication came from the Shropshire County Council, which wrote to see if she could give evidence against this great big man who had committed serious offences against her. It asked whether she would be fit mentally and physically to attend the assizes and face what is always a terrible ordeal. Dr. J. R. Mathers signed a report to say that


this little girl was mentally and physically fit to give evidence at the assizes— that is my certificate, J. R. Mathers. That was on 12th November, so far as I remember. The little girl gave evidence at the assizes and things went on and Christmas came and we had carols at the mental hospitals and hymns were sung about little children and the Kingdom of God. Then, early in January, Dr. Louise Eickhoff wrote to the Home Office and asked what was to be done with the little girl. Dr. Mathers had written to say that they "were achieving nothing with her here." That was fair enough, for this was not a juvenile mental hospital and it had no suitable accommodation and there was nothing to be done. So Dr. Louise Eickhoff wrote to the Home Office early in January, and although there was no reply it seems that the letter never turned up and there may have been a misunderstanding.
To be fair, in February, Dr. Mathers wrote and said that the weeks were going by and that the little girl was not getting any education. She was getting precious little treatment and she was exposed in a mental hospital to conditions in which not only was her education retarded, not only was she in the formative part of her life, but she was exposed to all the difficulties and all the problems associated with older people who are metnally ill.
The Home Office did not reply and Dr. Mathers wrote again and by now it was March. The sun was beginning to come out and spring had come, and in the spring a young man's thoughts lightly turn to thoughts of Paris, or even a trip to Birmingham, and, we are told, "A livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove."
By now it was April. Dr. Mathers wrote to the Home Office and said that there was some evidence of schizophrenia or a psychopathic personality— it is always schizophrenia or psychopathic personality in these days. He told the Home Office that the girl must go to some institution where skilful treatment would be available. He said that the Home Office authorities could make it an approved school if they liked. He said that she needed care and protection and that a juvenile psychiatrist could give her constant treatment and care.
The Home Office wrote back to say that there was no such institution anywhere. It did not have one. It did not say that the money had been spent on the hydrogen bomb. Not only was there no room at the inn, but there was no room for the little girl in any psychiatric institution. There was no room and no treatment for her anywhere. The Children's Department at the Home Office wrote to the Shropshire County Council to say that if the girl could be certified as a mental defective under Section 5 of the Mental Health Act, 1913, they could lock her up as a mental defective.
Dr. Ross wrote to say that she was not a mental defective whatever else she was and Chat she had an I.Q. of 80. I can Chink of a number of hon. Members whom I would not credit with an I.Q. of 80. In the girl's exercise books there were charming little essays, pages of highly complicated sums with every answer right, and some drawings which showed genuine talent. But this little girl was left in an adult mental hospital. When asked to say that she was mentally defective, Dr. Ross said that it was very difficult to say that, but it was then said that she might be said to be a moral defective.
Section 5 of the 1913 Act deals with idiots and imbeciles which are defined. Idiots are persons so lacking in mental ability that they may be a physical danger to themselves, but a moral defective is something different and is a person whose tendencies are so vicious and so criminal that he might be a danger to other people. The little girl was to be locked up as a moral defective because she might be a danger to the concupiscence of some randy old man of 64 with his trousers down. That was the case against the little girl and that was the ground for saying that she was a moral defective.
Mr. Rhydderch said this was monstrous. He said that he knew the girl and that this could not be done to her. This was the blustering, bouncing, interfering Napoleon who was pushing the doctors all over the place and running everything himself but who found time to be nice to a little girl and to get to like her. He said, "You cannot do this to this little girl". He said that he thought he said that in March but most


of the evidence shows that he probably said it rather later.
I hope that hon. Members will not think that I am criticising Birmingham, for this could have happened in Oldham or in Manchester. But one knows that there are generous homes with doors open for these people. One knows that doors would not have been closed and that even if there was no room in the inn at that time, there were still decent people with kindly hearts who would have taken that little girl.
David Rhydderch asked about sending her to her own home and said that she had a father and a mother. But the social worker's report said that that was hopeless and that there were other children at home which was where the trouble had started. This little girl had been going about with men, or rather they with her, since she was eight years old.
So they thought again. What about some sort of approved school—it might be possible to get her into one at Warrington. But before that was done David Rhydderch wrote to the Home Office. It was a perfectly reasonable and sensible letter, with not a word of criticism of anyone. All he said was that it would not be fair to certify this bright little girl—perhaps a little backward— as a mental defective, and that to lock her up with imbeciles and idiots would spoil her life and cripple her mind.
The evidence of Dr. Mathers is clear. He knew that David Rhydderch was going to Write this letter, and Dr. Rhydderch put the letter on the girl's file where Dr. Mathers could see it. Then when Dr. Mathers saw it he manifested the commencement of what is really a story by Dostoievsky, if not by Strindberg. We quote Juvenal lightly and talk of Quis custodiat ipsos custodes. We are apt to crack jokes about psychiatrists and say that they are sexual maniacs who have failed the practical, but we need a Strindberg to paint a picture of the mental specialist who sees developing in his mind the very things that he is there to cure. It needs a Dostoievsky to show the jealousy and the anger of the man who begins to see in his own mind, in the mirror of his own phychiatric knowledge, the development of the

very qualities, the vices, the passions that he is trying to cure in other people, and watches them fester and grow for ten years.
The hon. Member for Yardley, with that felicity of phrase which he does not often display, said that the bonfire was smouldering for years, and indeed that is fair. Dr. Mathers wrote to the Home Office, using (that little feline insidious phrase:
You might not have understood what the Chairman meant because he is only a layman.
That did not satisfy his jealously, so he wrote to the medical secretary of the board and said that if this sort of thing happened again the whole confidence of the public in our medical integrity would be lost, all this because someone tried to stop the little girl from going to a home for moral defectives after one of his colleagues was prepared to say that she was a moral defective. It is not a medical matter anyhow. David Rhydderch was a magistrate, and in the old days would have been called on to certify people for medical treatment after examination. He had examined this little girl. She liked him. He brought to the little girl a little interest which she had never had before. One of the reports says that all she needs is a little affection, not from old gentlemen, but from some decent trained personality so that she can focus her betrayed affection on somebody.
Louise Eickhoff comes out of this extremely well. She said that this little girl was suffering from subdued suicidal impulses. This was the case that excited Dr. Mathers' antipathy and animosity and his desire for revenge to such an extent that he wrote to the Home Office and to the hospital committee and said that the whole of public confidence was lost. It is true that there were statements in the Press, but they were not very exciting statements.
My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell) said that the story ended with this little girl's soul and body being saved. Thank God nobody knew her name. It ended with her getting married and becoming a decent and respected personality after that unpromising beginning. The hon. Member for Yardley, who left the Chamber after making his


speech, gave a very inaccurate account of the end of the story.
The little girl went to Hollymoor on 24th October, 1952. That is when it started. It was in 1961 when Dr. Mathers managed to persuade the medical committee to pass this vote of no confidence in the chairman of the hospital management committee.
We talk of
one who always marched breast forward, never doubting clouds would break, never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, held we fall to rise are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake.
The tribunal would call that a naive egocentric who never consulted anyone, not even a barometer.
David Rhydderch fills the picture very well. There is something comic but also macabre about this hard-working generous man who easily forgives and always wants to shake hands the next morning after having a row the night before. There is something almost comic, in a macabre sort of way, in thinking of them wandering around that hospital for ten years while psychiatrists began to need the services of fellow psychiatrists and, while jealousy and the bitterness that comes from jealousy, were developing and being fermented.
Dr. Orwin is obviously a nice young man, but not a man with a strong personality. He had not been there very long and had no great experience of what was happening. He went to a meeting of the doctors and wa,s told that they had passed a resolution of no confidence in the chairman. All that he did was to say,"All right." He did not know much about it. He did not know what the other doctors had agreed.
Weeks afterwards came the announcement that the right hon. Gentleman was to start an investigation, incidentally, an investigation into charges that ought never to have been formulated. Dr. Orwin realised that he might be asked to go into the witness box to support the resolution. He knew very little of what had happened. All he said was that he did not know anything about it. He did not know who was right or wrong, because all these things happened before he went there anyway. He wrote to the tribunal and said that he had agreed to the resolution, but frankly

did not know about all these things. He did not know about the charges against the chairman. It was a perfectly ordinary letter, and then he went before the tribunal. He gave evidence on subpoena.
The clock tells me that I have been talking for some time, but perhaps I may say one or two other things. The tribunal was misconceived. From the very first the tribunal put Mr. Rhydderch in the dock. It asked the doctors to write what was in fact a formal document on the lines of the French act d'Accusation. It said, "Chuck in everything. Say that he was rude to his teacher at school and say that he raped someone when he was 99. Put everything in." It is usually said that things start that way when they develop into murder.
The tribunal said,"We will have the witnesses for the prosecution first." The prosecuting counsel appeared for the doctors and doctors and my distinguished hon, and learned Friend the Member for Liverpool, Edge Hill (Mr. A. J. Irvine) led for the defence for Mr. Rhydderch. That is how it began. Then the tribunal found itself in a miserable difficulty. It did not say that the case against Mr. Rhydderch was proved. It said that a lot of the charges were nonsense and were not true, and that even where something was proved there was not much in it. God bless my soul! They were talking about losing a free church chaplain after a post-luncheon row ten years before, and arguing whether Mr. Rhydderch voted for him or against him.
They were deciding whether Mr. Rhydderch was an extrovert or an introvert, whatever those words mean. Nobody really seems to know. We are told by the Jung section that a man uses introversion to cover his extroversion. All this was being discussed at the trial of a distinguished public man—a man who, everyone agrees, took over some of the worst mental hospitals in the country. Everyone agrees that they were a disgrace to civilisation, and that they were altered to the extent that all the women's newspapers published photographs of them—alongside pictures of strip-teasers in the Bahamas—showing the windows, the beds and the settees,


and referring to them as a new conception of the mental hospital. Everyone said that this was due to Mr. Rhydderch. Nobody denied it. The tribunal did not. Nobody even mentioned the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley until he got up and mentioned himself.
All the time the tribunal was concerned with this sort of miserable scandalous and pettifogging matter, which somebody had fitted altogether. In charge of the prosecution was Dr. Mathers, this powerful personality whose sore was still festering and whose fires were still smouldering—who was reaching the time of real tragedy. I sympathise with him over this, because Dr. Mathers was an able medical man, and he must have known what folly it was to write the letter he did write. He must have known that he was betraying himself to the enemy. But his mind had got so possessed with hate that he could not stop himself doing something stupid. He had to finish the course. So he wrote that terrible letter to Dr. Orwin, saying, in effect, You crossed me. I shall smash you like a fly. You crossed me. Although as a mental specialist he knew it was a foolish letter which put him in the wrong, so strong had these passions become he could not do anything about it. He had to let it go.
So we come to the final document, which I do not want to read. Dr. Orwin, who had committed no crime except to say that he did not know anything about the matter, and who had given evidence under subpoena and had said one or two nice things about the chairman— nothing very much, and not very contradictory—found that on Monday that this meeting was being held on Tuesday. He thanked Dr. Mathers for being so kind as to let him know he was going to smash him, and for being so generous-hearted as to say that he was only doing it in the public interest and not from his own personal venom, and, half an hour before the meeting was held, handed in his resignation. Dr. Orwin is a man against whom no one has said a word except that he is not a Napoleonic figure. That is presumably the end of Dr. Orwin. That is the picture, and it is a macabre picture.
I have not said much about Mr. Rhydderch; practically everything has been said. Honourable dismissal is the sort of thing that happens these days. Hon. Members opposite may feel some sympathy for the victims of the recent political disturbances. We have heard a great deal about the right hon. and learned Gentleman for Wirral. Most of us have been inculcated with the first law of plutodynamics, that if there is a slump it is Wall Street and if there is a boom it is Selwyn. If a man is sacked and then made a Companion of Honour; if he is given a testimonial and offered another job, there is not much more that can be done for him. In Old-ham six mills have been closed this week but no one has said that they propose to do anything for the operatives from those mills. The friends of the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral come forward and say something which is metaphorically and literally true—that a bit of ribbon on the breast does not cover a bruise on the backside. That is incontrovertible.
What would be the position had we had an inquiry regarding the right hon. and learned Member for Wirral? What would be the position if witnesses came from the junior bench of the Treasury and said,"When he became Chancellor he could not do his decimals?" What would be the position if someone from the Foreign Office said. "I never trusted him since the day I learned that he could not spell Reykjavik and could not recall the new name for Nijni-Novgorod"? What would be the position if one of the waitresses from the restaurant said, "The right hon. and learned Gentleman was always dictatorial. He would go to the cold table and select his own ham"? What would the position be if some hon. Member said,"I saw him in the corridors at the time of Suez and he was not looking worried at all?"
We smile sometimes about these things, but here there is not much to smile about. What has happened is that £12,000 of public money has been spent in legal costs, about £1,000 of it in deciding whether Rhydderch was an introvert or an extrovert though we are told that introversion is adopted by extroverts as a new version and Birmingham has lost an outstanding public servant who has devoted himself selflessly and profitlesaly


without thought of gain not only to the services of mental hospitals but to the cause of mental health throughout the country. His papers on mental health and upon mental hospital design are widely respected.
We must strike a balance. We might have acquired the hon. Member opposite as the new chairman. But which scale of the balance one would put that imponderable I do not know. There is left the festering sore in the hospital with the doctors at loggerheads; with the nurses victimised—there was evidence that the nurses were told that if they did not support the doctors they would not last for long. That evidence, supported by letters, came from the matron. That is a sorry state of affairs. I do not envy the right hon. Gentleman his task of trying to put things right. But I think that he might at least do a little more in justice to David Rhydderch.

8.46 p.m.

Mr. E. Partridge: I have listened to all the debate but for the opening speech by the hon. Member for St. Panoras, North (Mr. K. Robinson), and I am surprised and somewhat disgusted at the histrionic effort of the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale), who made fun of things about which he should not have made fun and who turned round to is hon. Friends behind him and got laughs about things which are no cause for laughter. The one think that appears to be lacking is any thought about the great service to which hon. Members opposite pay lip-service but very little else, the service of public health.
It is the service which ought to stand above all, above the individual, and any claim for one man on account of what he has done, or in accounting for the effect of what he has done to make the bitterness to which the hon. Member for Oldham, West referred and which he did not deny had been created. He said that there was bitterness everywhere, and yet he thought that no inquiry was necessary and that nothing could be done to get rid of this festering sore of which he spoke so often.
I think that it would have been far better if hon. Members opposite had thought about how best to remove the evil which had been caused, because evil

there was. It is no use trying to find a scapegoat. We should be directing our minds, with all humility, to how best we may improve the service and get rid of personalities. They do not count if we are working unselfishly for the cause. Then personalities do not count. For myself—I think this should apply to hon. Gentlemen opposite as well—if I thought that my presence was a disturbing influence in a committee on a matter of this kind, I would rather resign than go on to try to prove that justice should be done. I think that the greatest possible injustice—

Mr. S. Silverman: Why does not the hon. Member do that?

Mr. Partridge: If I do cause such bitterness in the circles in which I try to do public service and could be told about it, I would try to remedy it or get out.

Mr. Silverman: I did not mean to be rude to the hon. Member in any way. Will he try to bear in mind that this inquiry was about persons and a great many people think that the inquiry came to the wrong conclusion? Therefore, if we are trying to prove that it came to the wrong conclusion, we have to talk about the persons. We cannot affect the issue by mealy-mouthing about personalities, and the hon. Member ought to know that.

Mr. Partridge: I can be accused of being mealy-mouthed or what one will, but I would very much rather that the circumstances had never arisen which caused an inquiry to be made. There was more than one person concerned in that.

Mr. Silverman: Only one person has suffered.

Mr. Partridge: I would not say that.

Mr. Silverman: I say it.

Mr. Partridge: A lot of quotations have been made this evening, but the one that I would remember is:
Who steals my purse steals trash … But he that filches from me my good name"—
I forget the rest.
Dr. Mathers has been dragged in the mud this evening here if in no other


place. I would have thought that it would have been far better for us to try to think how we could avoid these things happening in the future and not to try to see that a man who may be good or who may not—I do not seek to judge in this matter—should go back to a place where he had caused bitterness and friction. I would not have thought that that was in the best interests of the service. I hope that the Minister will find a way out of this matter but not in the way suggested to him by hon. Members opposite.

8.53 p.m.

Mr. Donald Chapman: What the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Partridge) does not realise is that while we all want to look to the future of the great service that is involved in this debate and see a good future for these hospitals, we are not prepared to do so by simply turning our backs on an injustice that is being perpetrated on one person who has given us so much voluntary service.
We cannot run away from an issue when injustice is being dome, and say, "Let us forget it and look only at the future". If we did that no one would learn anything from mistakes. I want to say several things to the Minister about the lessons that we have learned from this. The biggest lesson—and I hope that the Minister will give us an assurance about this—is that no tribunal of this kind should ever be held again. It makes one's blood boil to read what is British justice as set out in the pages of that report. The tittle-tattle about what Mrs. Ross said at the hairdressers and the tittle-tattle as to who was invited into the house on Christmas day. All kinds of judgments have been made on evidence that would never be accepted in a court of law in this country. On the basis of that, on the basis of a whole lot of half-truths, and on the basis of a lot of partly unsupported evidence, a man's reputation has been dragged in the mud. I am not prepared with the hon. Member for Batter-sea, South to forget all that and say that we must look only to the future.
I will try to be temperate, Strongly though I feel about this case. I hope that the Minister will confirm that, if any tribunal of this kind is set up again,

he will issue the strictest possible instructions about how it is to be run. We cannot have this happen again in the name of British justice. I want the Minister to confirm also that, if the misfortune arises and he has to appoint another tribunal of this kind, he will ensure that the people who are to be called in question before it are properly represented. The chairman was represented by his own Q.C. What about the hospital management committee? The committee is condemned in the report without any evidence being called on its behalf, without any of its members being called to testify about the precise charges against it, and without any legal representation, which the Minister himself refused to grant. Is this British justice? One begins to wonder whether it can be when one reads the report.
A second assurance I want from the Minister is that the lessons of this lamentable fiasco which was called an inquiry will be learned and that in future people involved will be properly represented according to the rules of what I am proud to call British justice.
This tribunal became a fiasco partly because the rules of justice were not followed and because the rules of evidence were not used properly. Right from the beginning Mr. Rhydderch was put on trial. The whole report is to this effect, "Mr. Rhydderch said or did this. Was it true?" That happens in paragraph after paragraph. The tribunal became so bemused with this that it itself began to do injustice to Mr. Rhydderch. It forgot to look at the characters of the other people. However, it did come through at one point. This is where the whole thing becomes lop-sided. It is a quotation which has not been made so far. Paragraph 18 of the main report says:
It has appeared to us that the psychiatrists have been, in their inter-personal relationships, too sensitive, too critical of others and too inclined to misinterpret motives.
The tribunal at one point did begin to see that perhaps somebody else ought to have been a little on trial as well as Mr. Rhydderch. It began to see that one ought to begin to look at the other people involved. Unfortunately, the tribunal became so involved in all this turmoil about Mr. Rhydderch and Mrs. Ross at the hairdressers and all this rubbishy tittle-tattle that is a disgrace in


the pages of the report that it forgot to do this. It forgot to look any further at the other people involved in the case.
It becomes a little clearer from the supplementary report. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hade) has said, it then emerges that this largely turns on the history of Dr. Mathers and not on the history of Mr. Rhydderch. According to the supplementary report the fight started with the argument about Dr. Orwin and Dr. Mathers kicking him off the medical committee. Two other little facts crept into the supplementary report which nobody seams to have noticed. The first is in paragraph 19, which says, without even pondering on the significance of it—
The two doctors had not spoken together for some months.
Secondly, paragraph 24 says:
… we feel it necessary to add that Dr. Mathers had opposed Dr. Orwin's appointment as a consultant and it appears that this antipathy has persisted.
We see what the situation is when we come to the supplementary report. There are chinks where the light has got through and one begins to see that other people should have been on trial before this tribunal. The first one should have been Dr. Mathers to ascertain whether a fair share, and perhaps an equal share, of the blame for responsibility for this lamentable breakdown in personal relationships should have gone to Dr. Mathers as well as to other lay members, including Mr. Rhydderch. It started with the "Hollymoor girl case", as it has been called. It went on through disagreement after disagreement. It became clear that Dr. Mathers was an unsuitable person for the position he held in view of the way in which he exercised his powers, which has been so violently condemned in the supplementary report.
It becomes clear that this was not only a travesty of British justice from the point of view of the manner in which the inquiry was conducted, but a travesty also in the findings, because not all the right people were properly questioned and put on trial. It was lopsided. If the tribunal had only been able to see the wood for the trees and had been able to dissociate itself from all the tittle-tattle about Mr. Rhydderch, it would have realised that it takes two people to make

a breakdown in personal relationships in a hospital like that.
The second point I wish to impress upon the right hon. Gentleman is that he must not accept these findings in toto as they stand. It is clear that the tribunal was conducted wrongly and became lost in a maze of intricacies about Mr. Rhydderch, and never examined whether other people were to blame. The few paragraphs which give a hint of this fact were never followed up in the final judgment.
I come to my third point, and this came out so brilliantly during the speech of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Seymour). If anybody ought to be on trial in this lamentable case it ought to be the regional hospital board. It was the job of the regional hospital board to solve this 'problem once it arose. The fact that the doctors turned it down and did not want the board to conduct the investigation and pronounce judgment should not have been sufficient to deter a proper regional hospital board from carrying on its job. If it is true, as it may be for all I know, that the board is not strong enough to carry out these functions, let us be told and let something be done about it. I should not have thought that the proper way to start off the proceedings was to kick off the chairman or the vice-chairman who had been a tower of strength on it. But that is by the way.
Moreover, I was ashamed at the haste with which the night hon. Gentleman rushed in to appoint two members immediately after the tribunal's findings. We had known for some time that this tribunal's findings were awaited. We had known 'that Mr. Rhydderch's re-appointment to the board was under discussion. Within two days of the findings being published in answer to a Question in this House, without waiting for any of us to put representations to him and to suggest ways in which the Board might be strengthened, the right hon. Gentleman rushes in with two names—names that I do not know and, therefore, I pass no judgment about them, but certainly without waiting for anybody to make suggestions about the lamentable failure of the board as well as of anybody else in this unfortunate case. I am very sorry that the right hon. Gentleman


would not even listen to us when we wanted to make 'those representations.
I now come to my fourth point. I want to be brief, because I (think that we have had a long enough debate, but I would say that in addition to the strictures on Dr. Mathers we now have to bear in mind that this story has not ended. We now have the situation in which Dr. Mathers and the G.M.C. apparently are unwilling to allow a medical representative of the regional hospital board to sit in at its future meetings. If this is so, we are entitled to ask the Minister what he intends to do about it. We cannot have a regional hospital board saddled with the job, under the Minister's direction, of sorting out the tangle of this report and being flouted by a set of doctors who say that, no matter what the board want to do to clear up the mess, they will not have its medical representative sitting in at meetings. The right hon. Gentleman must lay down the law and tell these medical men that what the board wants must stand and it must be obeyed. If they are not willing to do so, the Minister must remove them or discipline them in some other way.
The contrast between the behaviour of Mr. Rhydderch and Dr. Mathers after publication of the committee's report is quite extraordinary. Dr. Mathers is oondemned by the committee of inquiry in round terms—"wholly unjustified", "uncharitable", "vindictive towards a colleague", "motivated by a desire to have him removed", "acted irresponsibly", "failed to realise what was due from anyone in his position". Those are the terms used. This was a violent condemnation of a man in charge of a team of people. One would have expected that he would immediately put pan to paper and say that it was his duty to got out. He has done no such thing. More extraordinary still, when asked to do so by the regional hospital board, he has now refused a second time to resign. Apparently the board is saddled with him, and nobody can do anything. Will the Minister stand by and see this happen? The board cannot even get this man to resign in the best interests of the hospital. It is an extraordinary situation.
The same comments apply, unhappily, to some of the members of the medical

team. I speak with restraint here because they are all my constituents. I know some of them, and I do not want to pick on personalities any more than I wish to pick on the person I think is most to blame, namely, Dr. Mathers; but I suggest that it is in the interests of the hospital service that this medical team should be broken up.

The Minister of Health (Mr. J. Enoch Powell): The Minister of Health (Mr. J. Enoch Powell) indicated assent.

Mr. Chapman: They should be moved to other jobs, to other hospitals where they can create new paths of activity for themselves and where this sense of conspiracy can be dispelled. I was glad to see the Minister nodding. I hope that he will say that something can be done to move these gentlemen to fresh hospitals where there can be less chance of this sort of trouble continuing.
I come now to my final point. I am sorry to "pinch" the peroration of my hon. Friend the Member for Small Heath (Mr. Denis Howell). He had so many pieces of paper with him. I kept watching him picking them up and putting them down and I thought that this was one document which had escaped his notice. I refer to the letter which we have all had from this group of doctors. In my view, this is one of the most scandalous aspects of the whole matter. The group medical committee was told by the committee of inquiry that it must stop meddling in affairs which did not concern it. I do not want to exaggerate. The words in the report were:
The Group Medical Committee … should revert to, and not again trespass outside of, its proper function.
There is a further recommendation that the regional hospital board should maintain close supervision on the administration of the group. After being told to keep out, these doctors sent us this letter. In it, they have the effrontery and arrogance to say:
We, however, are somewhat dismayed at the amount of time we have had to spend and the amount of trouble we have had to contend with"—
how frightful for them, apparently—
in order to establish the unsuitability of a particular individual already in post.
By that, of course, they mean Mr. Rhydderch.
How much more are we to stand from these gentlemen? This is a quite intolerable way to treat Members of Parliament and to treat the findings of the committee of Inquiry. It gives added point to my remark that they ought to be removed to other jobs as soon as possible.
In contrast with what Dr. Mathers did, I would simply read the tribute which the chairman of the regional hospital board. Sir Arthur Thomson, paid to Mr. Rhydderch for the way that he behaved after the findings of the tribunal. He had the decency immediately to resign in the best interests of the service. Sir Arthur said:
No one knew better than Mr. Rhydderch that the recommendations of the committee of inquiry and their acceptance by the Minister confronted this board with problems of great difficulty, and as he realised that his chairmanship of Group 6 Management Committee would be a source of embarrassment to us he surrendered that office because he felt by so doing he would contribute to the best interests of the hospitals.
That should be written on a plain sheet of notepaper and sent to Dr. Mathers and he should be asked whether he has sentiments like that which we can then all praise.

Mr. Cleaver: The hon. Gentleman should inform the House that the chairman of the trades council has opposed the chairman throughout.

Mr. Chapman: This is typical. This is the sort of tittle-tattle which some people think is bound up in the report of a tribunal of this kind.

Mr. Cleaver: It is the truth.

Mr. Chapman: I can tell the hon. Gentleman many things which are the truth, but I have my doubts about whether they are relevant to what is said in this place. Like his hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook, the hon. Gentleman does not do the causes which he is trying to advocate any good by talking silly tittle-tattle, as I call it, of that kind.
I say to the Minister that this report is a scandal in the sense that true British justice does not emerge from its pages. I hope that we shall never have another one like it and that no person who has given such valiant service at such great cost to himself as Mr. Rhydderch has

given to the Birmingham hospitals will find himself exposed to this kind of Gestapo-like inquiry; it is very little else.
If the Minister wishes to see standing tribute to Mr. Rhydderch, he should see Hollymoor today and contrast it with the Hollymoor which I knew ten years ago. I saw it when I first became Member of Parliament for the constituency in which it is situated. I have seen step by step what that man has done for that hospital. He may have trodden on many people's toes—I am sure that he has— in the rough and tumble of Birmingham politics. When a Welshman is in charge who is very much like our late friend Aneurin Bevan in the way in which he often approaches people, people frequently get hurt. In Birmingham, one has to learn that this kind of robust. vigorous politics is the way in which public affairs are often conducted. I do not think that Mr. Rhydderch is to be blamed for that. He is to be praised for what he has created out of the chaos that there was at the hospital ten years ago.
The Minister must bear his share of the blame in this. I am sorry to say this, but he has been party to a form of inquiry which, no doubt, he instituted with the best motives but which in the end has proved to be the worst, un-British kind of tribunal which I personally could ever have imagined.

9.14 p.m.

Mr. Charles A. Howell: One thing which has intrigued me in this debate is the fact that we have been honoured throughout by the presence of the hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Partridge), who has even intervened in the discussion. I listened very carefully to hear what his interest was in this matter, but I did not discover it. However, I agreed with some of the things which he said. He said that if he ware on a committee and came to the conclusion that he was not getting on well with people or was not working properly for the benefit of the service he would get out. If one man has come out of this inquiry with honours it is Mr. Rhydderch, because he did exactly what the hon. Gentleman said he would have done. Why on earth the hon. Member for Battersea, South did not go on and say that the doctor who


instigated all this should have done the same and set the same high example, I do not know.

Mr. Partridge: I was objecting to the blame being put upon the Minister for instituting an inquiry when one was so obviously necessary to find what were the difficulties. I withheld judgment on Mr. Rhydderch or Dr. Mathers. The only thing I said was that if it be thought that Dr. Mathers had come out of this unscathed, tonight had disproved it, because his name has been mentioned in every second sentence by hon. Members opposite, and not in terms of praise. I was not judging between Dr. Mathers and Mr. Rhydderch. I was saying that my right hon. Friend the Minister had done the best in the circumstances to get rid of the friction.

Mr. Howell: We have recently been through the turmoil of resignations, but none of them was as honourable as the resignation of David Rhydderch. I thank God that in the reshuffle the Minister of Health did not become Home Secretary. If anything is a travesty of justice, it is what the Minister of Health is responsible for here.
The Minister set up an inquiry with indecent haste at the request of some people without ascertaining the facts behind the demand. He had a plain statement of fact that they disagreed with and objected to the chairman. He did not get any facts. Eventually, we have heard, three charges were put forward. I ask hon. Members, on either side, to imagine what would happen if any of them, after passing a traffic light showing red received a summons for driving without lights. That is exactly the kind of thing that has happened here. The inquiry began on three charges. Each of the three was dropped immediately the Minister put it up. I hope that when he replies, he will tell us how many similar inquiries have been held since 1948.
This is where I part company with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Spark-brook (Mr. Seymour), who I am sorry is no longer present. The regional board obviously has come out of this badly. As a member of that board, the hon. Member told us that this matter has been festering for ten years. That is a clear indication that it started with the

girl at Hollymoor. If the sore has been festering for ten years, the regional board has been lacking.
I want to get clear the conditions under which the Minister has done all this. Obviously, he did not make inquiries of the regional board and ask whether it was satisfied with the complaint that had been received from its employees. These medical people are appointed by the regional board, not by the hospital management committee, so the responsibility is that of the board. Having received a communication from the Board, the first thing that the Minister should do is to write to the Secretary of the Board asking for the request for an inquiry to go before the board. That was not what the Minister did.
I am making no imputations about why the Minister did this, but imputations are being made and will be made. It is up to the Minister tonight to make plain why he ordered the inquiry without, for example, sending people from his Department. Did he not receive legal advice from his Department about the terms of the inquiry? When the three original charges were withdrawn and forty-two more were put in, did he not feel any grounds for suspicion? If his original inquiry was based on three charges, why on earth did he allow it to go on when the three were withdrawn? That is a question which the Minister must answer.
Let us look at the regional board and the hospital management committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) said that the two hon. Gentlemen opposite, the hoe. Gentleman the Member for Yardley and the hon. Gentleman the Member for Sparkbrook would be ashamed if they read their speeches tomorrow in HANSARD. I will not go as far as that, because it was obvious from the whole of their speeches that, just as my colleagues were intent on clearing the character of David Rhydderch, the chairman who has been arraigned, they were intent on looking after the medical advisory committee. But can anyone trust any member of the advisory committee from now on? Do not they stand condemned as weak? One could not speak English; another had been in the hospital service only


about six months; but they all subscribed to a unanimous decision against their Chairman. And they did not even know what it was about. They could not possibly have known what it was about. Are they weak?
The hon. Member for Yardley referred to the chairman setting up ad hoc committees. He nods his head. I thought I was right. He said that he set up ad hoc committees, apparently to cut out red tape and to get something done. Is he trying to tell this House that those ad hoc committees were secret and reported to the chairman only? Did they not report to the management committee? Did the management committee approve of what they were doing? Did they not report at all? Were they secret committees?

Mr. Cleaver: The management committee did not meet often enough and the device of holding ad hoc committees suited the chairman very well indeed.

Mr. Howell: If the management committee is not meeting often enough I claim that that is the responsibility of the committee. There can be no question about it. What the hon. Gentleman has said and what his hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook has said amounts to this, that they have condemned out of hand every member of that committee.

Mr. Cleaver: No.

Mr. Howell: There can be no denial of it. I do not know what the hon. Gentleman wants. Do we normally appoint the weakest member of a committee to be the chairman? When I was a voluntary tutor of the National Council of Labour Colleges I told the Council that the chairman had to be a strong man. In this case, apparently, we had two strong men who meant their job to go without red tape.
But surely to goodness they are not going to tell me that here again the regional board is to blame? Is it responsible for picking the weakest people in the Birmingham district? I cannot accept that for a moment—not even of the members of the Tory Party on that committee. I think they have, every one of them, done a good job of work. I would not recognise it as being composed of weak men or women.
Are we asked to believe that this chairman so dominated them that not one of them—not one—had the courage to write to the secretary of the regional board and, as the hon. Gentleman the Member for Battersea, South said, perhaps resign from this management committee, because "It is a one-man bank and I cannot do my job"? No one has done that. No one on the committee has complained about the chairman, only the hospital superintendent.

Mr. Cleaver: The ad hoc committee itself made decisions and dictated them to the committee and that suited the chairman when that happened. The secretary to the committee could call a meeting of the committee.

Mr. Howell: The hon. Member is getting deeper into the mire. I am coming to the conclusion that he will be ashamed of what he has told the House now. He says the management committee did not in fact meet regularly or did not meet often enough. I think the Minister and his Department would have had something to say if the management committee had met to deal with every little item instead of having sub-committees, which every hospital management committee does.
There is no question that the committee of inquiry went outside its terms of reference and broke every ethic of British justice. It arraigned, judged and eventually condemned members of the committee who had had no right to come before it. I do not know whether the Minister had the right to delete from the report certain paragraphs which were irrelevant, but at no time, as far as I am aware, did the management committee come into this. We have all had a letter saying that the management committee has protested to the board about this —why is the Minister laughing?

Mr. Powell: Since the hon. Member has referred to me, I will say straight away that nothing whatever was deleted from the report. It was published as I received it. The hon. Gentleman is under a misapprehension.

Mr. Howell: I am sorry, but the right hon. Gentleman was not only laughing but not giving attention to what I was saying. I said that I did not know whether he had the right to do it. Here


we have a complaint by a management committee that it has been condemned out of hand without having had an opportunity to answer any questions.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Mr. Cleaver) does not seem to agree with me, but I can tell him that every layman who reads the report will consider that not one of the members of the committee ought to have been there in the first place. The report says that they are too weak to do the job and that they have allowed themselves to be dominated by the chairman.
I am not interested in individuals in this case. One man has acted like a British gentleman and resigned, and it is now up to the others to do the same thing to allow the Health Service to function properly in Rubery and Holly-moor. I hope that some pressure will be applied if the Minister does not exercise his powers in this regard.
I plead on the behalf of the chairman. I am not the chairman of a hospital management committee, but I am the chairman of a hospital committee, and it may well be that I tread on corns going round the hospitals every Saturday morning trying to put right things that I see wrong instead of waiting a month for a hospital committee meeting. There are not many laymen of the working class who are chairmen of hospitals. They cannot afford to be, because it is expensive and one must sacrifice a lot of time. The Minister and others on the Government Front Bench pay tribute to the work of laymen, and I subscribe to that also, but is it British justice that if a medical committee makes accusations against a chairman and he cannot afford to present his case with legal advice, he must accept everything that is said against him and resign?
I make no bone-? about this. If the accusation had been made against me, I should have had to resign straight away and allow it to go by default because I could not have afforded to defend myself as David Rhydderch was forced to. He must have placed his home, his family and his whole life in jeopardy to defend himself. The Minister gave him no assistance at all, not even moral assistance by saying originally that he would make a donation of £100 or, subsequently, £250.
It is not fair that when a doctor who has made accusations against a layman can get the whole of his expenses covered by his profession, the layman is in jeopardy because he may not be able to afford to defend himself. If the right hon. Gentleman intends to run the regional boards and hospital management committees with layman, he must give some consideration to how he can protect these people against charges and accusations arising from their work so that none will be in danger of losing his character, as Mr. Rhydderch was in danger of doing, for financial reasons. That is not British justice.
Furthermore, if the Minister has the misfortune to have to order another inquiry, I hope that he will see that the charges contained in the original accusation are those for which the terms of reference are given, and will not change the terms of reference later in order to bring in what my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman) called "a lot of tittle-tattle". It is the Minister and the administration of justice who are on trial, not Mr. Rhydderch. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will give us some of the explanations we have been seeking.

9.31 p.m.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Enoch Powell): There are essentially two, and only two, questions which have been at issue throughout this debate. The first is whether I should have set up this inquiry under Section 70 of the National Health Service Act. The second is whether, the committee of inquiry having reported, its report should have been acted upon. There are other matters which I will deal with as I go on, but these are the two essential points at issue.
On the 27th September last year, the medical committee of this group passed a resolution of no confidence in the chairman. That resolution it forwarded to the regional hospital board, its employer, sending a copy to me to which was presently added the representation on the part of the chairman of the committee that I should hold an inquiry into the matter.
Now the holding of an inquiry under Section 70 is not a first resort in a matter


of difficulty in the National Health Service. It is essentially the last resort. It is a power, as I understand it, which is given to the Minister to enable him to inquire, for the benefit of the Service, into the facts of a situation which cannot otherwise properly be dealt with.
There was no doubt that the first instance in this case was the regional hospital board itself, the employer of these men, and whose agent for the administration of these hospitals the hospital management committee is. As the House has been reminded, on receipt of the resolution the regional board appointed three of its members, the late chairman, Sir Edward Thompson, the present chairman, Sir Arthur Thomson, and the Bishop of Lichfield to attempt to reconcile the differences. The committee of inquiry's report in paragraph 189 said,
The ministrations of this ad hoc committee were rejected and the rejection was quite definitely on the G.M.C. side and not on that of the Chairman.
So there was no question but that this matter could not be resolved by the regional board itself. Indeed, the chairman of the board wrote to me following the activities of the subcommittee and said,
I regret to have to inform you that our attempts to reconcile the difference were unavailing. In these circumstances there is no other course open to me but so to inform you and to suggest that you now make arrangements for an independent inquiry.
Thus, after attempting to reconcile the differences, the regional board reached the conclusion that there was no course open to deal with this situation except the appointment of an inquiry by me.
Now, these were the people—the chairman, the present chairman, and the Bishop of Lichfield—who had been charged by the board with the duty of reconciling the differences, and this was their conclusion. This was the result of their attempt. No hon. Member of this House can argue that, confronted with a resolution of the medical committee of these hospitals saying that they had no confidence in the chairman, confronted by the fact that 'the regional hospital board was unable to resolve the differences, and confronted by the recommendation of the chairman of that board that an inquiry should be ordered, he would have done anything else but

use the powers of last resort which are entrusted to me by the Act to ascertain the facts by an impartial inquiry.

Mr. K. Robinson: What the right hon. Gentleman is saying seems to be very curious. He is, in effect, saying that if there is a dispute in the Health Service, and if one of the parties refuses to accept the jurisdiction of the court set up, then, automatically, the case will go to him for an independent public inquiry, and that under Section 70, he will grant it.

Mr. Powell: No court had been set up. I was confronted with a situation in which the medical committee had passed a resolution of no confidence in the chairman, in which the regional hospital board, their employers, and responsible directly for the hospital management committee administering the hospitals, had failed to resolve the differences, and in which the regional hospital board itself considered that an inquiry was the only available action. I do not believe that any hon. Member of this House in my position would have done other than order an inquiry in these circumstances.

Mr. Hale: Does this mean any more than that the right hon. Gentleman is saying that when a medical specialist quarrels with somebody in the Health Service and refuses to alter his mind, all the rest follows inevitably?

Mr. Powell: Of course it does not, and the hon. Member perfectly well knows it, but it does mean that where a situation arises in which the management of a group of hospitals and the welfare of the patients in them are jeopardised by a dispute which the regional board itself cannot resolve, it is the duty of the Minister to act, and that no hon. Member of this House in my position would have acted otherwise. That is what it means.

Mr. R. T. Paget: Does the right hon. Gentleman mean that where one of the parties summoned by the employer refuses to go to the employer and refuses to state their case to the employer, it follows from that that the employer is incapable of resolving a problem in which one of the complainants refuses to appear before him, and that he can have a public inquiry? It is extraordinary.

Mr. Powell: Not necessarily, but, in the situation which existed, there was no practical alternative to the course which I took, and there was no other course which would have safeguarded the future of the patients and of the hospitals in question.
I had to decide whether I should direct the holding of this inquiry in private or in public. I begin with a prejudice in favour of holding an inquiry in public, because if the situation is such that it is necessary, as I judged it to be necessary, for the Minister to resort to these powers under Section 70, there needs to be strong reason why the inquiry should be held otherwise than in public.
Reference has been made to a previous inquiry set up by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, East (Sir D. Walker-Smith), my predecessor, into a matter at Shrewsbury Hospital. The reason which led my predecessor in those circumstances to decide that the inquiry should be in private was the fact that the material evidence would be evidence given by women patients about maternity. He held that in those circumstances that was a reason which counterbalanced the general presumption in favour of a public holding of the inquiry.
But there was another consideration in this matter. If there had been a likelihood that this could have been resolved without publicity and these hospitals could have got back on an even keel and the matter been resolved, that would have been a justification for the inquiry being held in private. It was for that reason that I indicated that if both the parties to the inquiry wished that it should be held in private, it might be so held.
Unfortunately, that was not the position. It is important that the House should bear in mind the view of this matter which was formed by the committee of inquiry itself. The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Hale) was under a misapprehension, for it was not a view which the committee farmed before holding the inquiry, because it was not the committee but I who had to take the responsibility of deciding whether the inquiry should be in public. But at the end of its work, it decided that this was a case in which "it was

clear from the outset that something more than conciliation could possibly be necessary", and it made it clear in paragraph 139 of its report that in its view it was right—this was after the event —that the inquiry should have been held in public.

Mr. Hale: I know that the right hon. Gentleman is trying to be fair. My intervention was to make two points. The first was the statement quoted by the right hon. Gentleman after the tribunal in relation to its expression of view before it had heard any evidence. It had no facts to go on. If it had been an impartial tribunal, it would not have known what it was about—and it was only two days since the charges had been formulated. If the tribunal is saying that before it started it had come to a conclusion, then it had got some information from somewhere and we should like to know the source.
The second point was that the whole of Mr. Rhydderch's case was that these were misunderstandings, that he did not know how they happened, that they had been festering for years. He kept saying that he believed he could put it right by shaking hands. That may sound foolish, but he meant it. How could the tribunal decide, before meeting Mr. Rhydderch, before hearing the charges and before knowing the facts?

Mr. Powell: I am glad that I made it clear that the expressions of opinion were reached by the committee not before it had begun its work but afterwards, when it was looking back on the inquiry and deciding on the wisdom or otherwise of holding it in public.
Another point in connection with the inquiry was the representation of the hospital management committee. There is no question of my having taken any action to exclude the hospital management committee from representation. The regional hospital board sent me a copy of the resolution of the hospital management committee asking for steps to be taken to obtain legal representation for the chairman and vice-chairman at public expense. The question of the representation of the chairman has been dealt with and is not in issue here. As regards the representation of the vice-chairman; I noted that the vice-chairman was not named as a


party in the terms of reference of the committee, but that if it should transpire that matters were raised at the inquiry affecting the vice-chairman, the committee of inquiry would be able to consider whether she should be regarded as a party entitled legal representation, in which case the question of any contribution to legal expenses would be on the same basis as in the case of the chairman. There is, therefore, no question of the hospital management committee having been excluded from representation at the enquiry as it took place.

Mr. Denis Howell: I hesitate to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but surely this is ludicrous. The committee said that the chairman had to defend himself, but wanted the vice-chairman to be represented by counsel. It was not until this report came out castigating the whole committee that we got to know that this was to happen without the committee being represented.

Mr. Powell: I pointed out that the representation from the hospital management committee was in regard to the representation of the chairman and the vice-chairman, and I dealt with that.
As the House knows, the committee reported and immediately on the report being issued the chairman of the hospital management committee, Mr. David Rhydderch, resigned.

Mr. Ede: In the whole of this debate we have not heard the terms of the tribunal. I have been waiting to hear them, and I hope that the Minister will tell us what they were.

Mr. Powell: They are quoted in the first paragraph of the committee's report. I do not know whether I need trouble the House by reading them, but they are set out in full in the paragraph.
The House is now concerned with the question whether, that report having been issued by the committee of inquiry, Which was followed by the resignation of Mr. Rhydderch, the hospital management committee chairman, I should have accepted the report and it should have been acted on, or whether I should have declined to do so, for that is the practical issue.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Chapman) was the only hon. Member who was clear and candid

in his answer to that question. He said that I ought to have rejected it. No other hon. Member suggested that. The hon. Member for St. Pancras, North (Mr. K. Robinson) used the expression that "the objectivity of the committee might be called in question", but I do not think that anyone, except perhaps the hon. Member for Northfield, seriously suggested that after I had set up a committee of inquiry under Section 70, and after it had reported as a result of a full and careful hearing and consideration, I, as the responsible Minister, should have rejected that advice and sought to prevent action being taken on it.
I cannot conceive an action which would have been a greater dereliction of my duty, which was to resolve this situation in the interests of the hospitals and the patients. I cannot conceive that it could have been right for me, when an impartial committee after all those proceedings had come to its conclusion on the matters submitted to it, and had given its advice, to turn it down and leave the hospitals in exactly the same deadlock as that from which the whole inquiry had originated.
That is an absolutely inconceivable course, but I will not rest on that. As it was my duty to do, I applied my mind to the report which the committee made to me. I cannot transfer this responsibility to anyone else, and I therefore say that after a careful study of that report I was satisfied that its conclusions and recommendations were right, that it was right for me to accept them, and that action upon them should follow.

Mr. Hale: I do not want to use a discourteous word to the right hon. Gentleman but I am afraid that I am going to. In my view this is mere histrionics. He appointed a committee to investigate an allegation of misappropriation of public funds. The charge was that he improperly used public funds supplied for supervision and audit. He asked the committee to investigate that. The charge was withdrawn. He should then have cancelled the proceedings and not allowed the committee to go on discussing whether Mrs. Ross should have had her sink or not.

Mr. Powell: I am obliged to the hon. Member for enabling me to rebut this


as a complete travesty of the facts. The committee was to inquire
into differences which had arisen between the Chairman of the Hospital Management Committee … and the Medical Committee of that Group leading up to the passing by the Medical Committee of a resolution set out in a letter … on 27th September and any matters occurring subsequently connected therewith",
and to report to me on the facts found. Following the setting up of this committee the medical committee was invited to put forward the grounds on which its resolution of no confidence was founded.

Mr. Charles A. Howell: The right hon. Gentleman set it up without knowing the grounds.

Mr. Powell: I have explained the reasons for setting it up. They had nothing to do with particular allegations in one letter concerning public funds. I have explained that it was the situation which arose out of the resolution of no confidence which ultimately made the setting up of this committee inevitable, and that the grounds for the resolution of no confidence which were placed before the committee of inquiry—and which, as the hon. Member says, did not include that item—were grounds which it was invited to put forward when the committee was set up.
I believe that hon. Members on both sides recognise that, in practice, there is no real alternative in these circumstances, if we want to secure the future of these hospitals—the differences and the history having been examined by an impartial body—to action upon the lines recommended by that body.

Mr. Chapman: The right hon. Gentleman has been good enough to mention that I alone suggested that he should have rejected the report. May I make my view clear? My point was that if one reads this report it becomes clear that the whole proceeding was a travesty of British justice as we know it. No matter whether its conclusions were useful, in a practical way, in helping to resolve the dilemma, the method used was a travesty of justice. My second point was that not all the right people had been put "in the dock", and for that second reason the report should have been rejected. I meant to make it quite clear that I was not disagreeing

with the general idea that the practical way out might be the right one.

Mr. Powell: I appreciate the reasons for which the hon. Member for Northfield, and he alone, said that he would have rejected the report, although in my opinion that course would have been clearly impracticable. The chairman had resigned. Such a course would have been totally against the interests of the Service, the hospitals and the patients. It would also have been contrary to my own judgment of the conclusions arrived at after a study of the report.
My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Partridge) said, rightly, that what matters—and this has been my consideration from the beginning of this affair—is a better future for the running of these hospitals, since I believe that we all recognise that the situation which existed and which led to these events could not but have the most harmful repercussions upon the hospitals and patients. Therefore, perhaps the most important conclusion of the committee, and one upon which the Board has taken action, is that these hospitals should be regrouped. I have assented to the proposals put to me by the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board for the regrouping of these hospitals.
I regard that action as the key to the solution of this problem and to a better future for these hospitals and the atmosphere in them. It will give a new start to all concerned. It will give a new grouping of the medical officers, and it will give a new structure of hospital management committees. Indeed, I believe, out of all the conclusions at which the committee of inquiry arrived, that was the most important.

Mr. Charles A. Howell: Including a new superintendent?

Mr. Powell: That depends on the regional board. It is a matter for the board to decide.
The hon. Member for St. Pancras, North said that these events had demonstrated that a cabal of doctors could remove a chairman whom they disliked, and it has been repeatedly suggested that what has happened in this case will weaken the inducement to lay people to


serve and the confidence in lay administration in the hospital service. I totally disagree. A cabal of doctors will not remove a chairman or anyone else, unless what that expression means is that an impartial committee of inquiry can come to a conclusion which results in the chairman, or the lay administrator, deciding that it is in his duty, in the light of those conclusions, to resign.
Those are the facts and the statement by the hon. Member for St. Pancras, North is a travesty of the facts. I believe that the effect of it being seen that there is a determination in circumsances of this kind to bring resolution to a situation which had become intolerable for all concerned is not something which will deter people from voluntarily giving of their time to the hospital service. It is a precondition of a healthy lay administration in the hospital service that there should be the fullest determination to resolve a situation of this kind if it arises.
Consequently, what has happened, painful and regrettable though At is in its personal repercussions and the events surrounding it, will not only mean that this hospital will have a better future but that the service itself will be stronger.

Orders of the Day — TEACHERS

9.57 p.m.

Mrs. Harriet Slater: I desire to raise the problem of the supply of teachers. I believe that this question of the supply of teachers is of great importance. It affects the interest of our children and is fundamental to the whole of the economic future of the country. Unless our children have the right education from the start it means that this country is not making proper provision for the future. This problem has been raised repeatedly during the last six or seven years. In the Ministry's report for 1961 it states that the future staffing prospects in schools causes anxiety. The National Advisory Council on the Training and Supply of Teachers referred to the same problem in its report and says that the shortage of teachers is seen to be not merely a present but a chronic disability.
The Ministry has been repeatedly warned and advised by all kinds of or-

ganisations and people interested in education, including the Advisory Council, the National Union of Teachers and local education authorities. It has been advised that the estimate for the supply of teachers was totally inadequate. When the three-year course was first discussed the Ministry was again warned that the estimated number of teachers fell far below what was considered adequate.
I should like to congratulate the new Minister of Education on his appointment, and I hope that we shall see a change of policy at the Ministry. At the time when the Present Minister was Parliamentary Secretary, I asked whether he had made a proper estimate of the number of teachers required for the three-year training course and the number placed in the training colleges. The answer that the right hon. Gentleman gave me on that occasion was that it was not quantity we were concerned about but quality. I hope that we have always been concerned about the quality of our teachers. I, too, am concerned, but one of our concerns is also quality and quantity. Those estimates have been inadequate because some of the warnings which have been given have not been properly taken notice of. Over the last two months we have had panic measures at the Ministry. We have urged local education authorities to set up day training colleges. There have been auxiliary helpers in our schools. We have appealed to married women to come back. All this may be very necessary, but I maintain that the action taken has been sadly belated.
What is the problem? The Ministry's Report states on page 8 that in January, 1961, we had almost 7 million pupils, actually 6,951,517 pupils on the registers in our day schools. This excludes all nursery schools and all special schools. This means that in infant, junior and secondary modern schools there are 37,236 more than in 1960. As the Minister's Report states, the infant position remains practically unchanged. The junior situation shows a decrease by 52,000 last year, compared with 101,000 in 1959. The seniors on the register rose by 90,000 pupils. The number of pupils in 6th forms increased by 112,530, which was 13,316 more than in 1960. Not only have we the position of an increase of pupils in our ordinary schools but the


tendency of more pupils to stay on longer at school. What is the result of that position?
Again, according to the 1961 Report, we still have 19·7 per cent. of our junior children in classes of over 40, which means that we have 19·7 per cent. of our children in junior schools in over-sized classes on the basis of the regulations under the 1944 Act. That means we have 18,456 classes over-sized and 125,000 children in those classes. I maintain that because of that situation we have 125,000 children in our junior schools who are not having their first real opportunity of a good education. That is the seriousness of this whole problem of teacher supply. If we had been doing our job in 1961 we should have considered that 40 children in an infant school were too many and at no time should we have more than 30. I have recently been told that in September many junior and infant schools in Stoke will start with classes of over forty.
In secondary modern schools 61·6 per cent. of children are in over-sized classes —that is, classes of over thirty. This is serious in 1961. The Ministry Report, "Secondary Education for all. A new drive", published in December, 1958, ended by saying this:
The programme set out in this White Paper is therefore part of a concerted drive to create an educational system adequate to meet both national and individual needs in the modern world.
In a situation where large numbers of children are in over-sized classes we do not begin to provide the education which is adequate to meet the needs of the present and the future modern world.
What is the position about teachers? In the year ending March, 1961, we recruited 17,100 women and 7,600 men, a total of 24,700. In the same year 15,700 women and 3,800 men left. We all recognise that the wastage of women teachers is a very real problem. Women get married younger. They have their children younger. Therefore, we lose many women in the early years after training. However, much more can be done to attract these women back into teaching when their families have got out of the very young age. We are told by those who make estimates that the net increase in teachers for this year will be 4,200 compared with 5,200 last year.
There is, however, one pleasant feature about the recruitment of teachers. More graduates—unfortunately, from my point of view, more men graduates—go into teaching than they did previously. Between 1951 and 1961 there was an increase in the number of graduates going into teaching. Unfortunately, last year there was the lowest increase in the number of graduates going into teaching for the last ten years. We cannot afford to let this develop into a trend.
The Council which advises the Minister makes these estimates. In 1960 there were 264,000 teachers, whereas the demand was 329,000, a shortage of 65,000. For 1965, which will soon be upon us, the figures are 284,000 and 355,000, which will leave us with a 51,000 shortage. For 1970 the figures are 314,000 and 363,000, a deficiency of 49,000, although the Morris Report Investment for National Survival, which is a very good title, puts this higher. For 1980—if we are to face this problem correctly, we must not think that 1980 is too far ahead—the figures are 372,000 and 412,000, a deficiency of 40,000. Therefore, even twenty years hence we shall still be 40,000 teachers short of our demand, even with the present policy of a school leaving age of 15 and classes of forty for juniors and thirty for secondary moderns. The school population is increasing, and it is estimated that in twenty years the school population, because of the increasing birth rate, will have grown from 6·9 million to 8·6 million—a 25 per cent. increase by 1980. Again these figures take no account of the raising of the school-leaving age.
In Investment for National Survival it is estimated that by 1970 we shall need an average recruitment of 31,000 teachers per year over a long period if we are to take account of the rising birth rate and the wastage in men and women teachers, and this document concludes with these words:
We conclude, therefore, that if the rising child population is to be taught, if people's needs are to be met, and if all the reforms that most educationists and informed observers regard as essential are to be carried out, then in the next ten years we shall have to maintain an average annual rate of recruitment of teachers from 30.000 to 35,000 a year.


It goes on to say that able and ambitious men and women must be encouraged to go into the teaching profession.
So far I have been talking only of the problem as it affects our ordinary schools, but we have to realise—and this is pointed out in the Report of the Advisory Council—that there is also the recruitment of teachers for our further education departments to be considered. My own local authority is finding that we cannot get some of the lecturers that are needed for our further education departments. They can claim higher salaries outside, and, in addition, the attraction of coming into these departments is not so great as some of us would have hoped. We have to consider the needs of further education, higher education, training colleges, universities and youth work. We have a young man as Parliamentary Secretary who, we are told, will deal with the requirements for youth work. He has got a large problem on his hands to recruit active leaders and lecturers for the youth and adult services.
As for the size of classes, the story is the same everywhere. My own local authority has published a very good book on education in Stoke-on-Trent in 1961. It reports that even in Stoke we shall have 138 classes of juniors with over 40 in them, six with over 50— which makes me shudder—and 161 secondary modern classes with over 35 and 39 classes with over 40. What equality of opportunity have these children got? What real attempt are we making to see that these children have at the very beginning the right opportunity and the correct foundations for a decent education? What chance have some of them got to go on to further education if they are forced to be educated in oversized classes?
I have no proof, but I am told that in some parts of South Staffordshire emergency plans are being made for a four-day week for children's education. In today's Guardian it is seriously suggested that the school starting age should be increased to six years of age. I hope that the Minister will not agree to that. I believe in nursery education, never mind putting up the starting age to six.
I come now to the uneven working of the quota system. I know that I am on dangerous ground here. We have a

quota system whereby so many teachers are allocated to various localities, but the quota system never works properly either in the localities or nationally because the distribution of pupils makes it extremely difficult to apply. I am told by my own chief education officer—the Minister may say that he is having an argument about this—that, if the quota system remains as it is, in 1963, when the first lot of teachers comes out, Stoke-on-Trent will not be able to employ a single girl or boy who has gone from Stoke-on-Trent to be trained as a teacher. Every one of them will have to work outside their own area. This is a great problem for some of these young folk who feel that they have a responsibility to their parents to stay at home and be a help after having spent three years at college.
There must be greater training college provision. The previous Minister urged a doubling-up in some of our colleges, and some of our colleges were quite good at it. When an estimate of 12,000 more places was made, we said then that it was inadequate. Later, the Minister increased the estimate to 16,000 more places. He was as much as one-third out in his estimate. We still say that this greater estimate is too small. The previous Minister urged local education authorities to start day training colleges as a sort of temporary measure. I understand that it is estimated that 10,000 more places would give us 3,000 more teachers per year.
Has the Ministry considered other possible places where training college facilities could be started? I have been told about some former naval premises in Pembrokeshire. I have not seen them, and I do not know how suitable they are. We may be told that such premises would create difficulties. Of course they would, but difficulties of that kind are made to be overcome when we have a great problem before us, and they must be overcome.
In my view, the Ministry should look, especially now that we have a three-year course, at the possibility of training colleges being able to award an internal degree of their own to give the teachers who go through the colleges an increased status.
More effort should be made to persuade our young folk who are going


through our further education departments to go into teaching. We have a women's college in Stoke-on-Trent which was started originally to train nursery assistants and give a pre-nursing course, but each year now we regularly have young girls in that college who get an urge to go on for teaching. They are encouraged by the principal to take up the teaching profession and not just to stay at the women's technical college but to go through training college. More of this sort of thing could be done in all kinds of technical and commercial colleges.
We must encourage more graduates to go in for teaching. I hope that not all such graduates will think that they are suited only to go in for secondary modern school teaching or grammar school teaching but that some of them will think of going into our junior schools. Very much more could be done to persuade those students in our universities who are uncommitted for any particular profession to go into the teaching profession. Even at that age they have not all made up their minds what they want to do. The Ministry could do more to bring about co-ordination between training colleges and universities. I agree that we should attract more married women into the teaching profession, but much more must be done before many of them will come back. There are all kinds of problems. There is, for instance, the problem of tax which is a very real problem for some of these women.
I have enough faith in the Minister to know that he will not succumb to the idea that it is a waste of money to train women to become teachers because the wastage is so great, just as some people think that it is a waste of money to educate a girl because the chances are that she will get married and merely cook and do general household chores. It is worthwhile training women to be teachers even though they may leave the profession after a year or two because if they return to the profession their experience in the home and as mothers will have made them very much better teachers.
Part-time teachers must be encouraged in certain subjects. I am not fond of

people doing sessional duties, but, in view of the present difficulties, much should be done to encourage people to return part-time to teach science or mathematics or those subjects in which there are real teaching difficulties.
I wish to mention in passing teaching machines. I watched a television programme in which a maker of these teaching machines was being interviewed by Huw Wheldon, and I became literally scared stiff as the interview progressed. It was claimed that one could train a child of 7½ years to use the machine and to do without a teacher. Let us use machines and visual aids of this kind as aids only, because education means teaching a person not only how to acquire knowledge but to have a soul and to become a useful citizen. Unless education does that, a knowledgeable person can become a very great danger to the country and to the world. We have had glorious examples of that. I hope that during the present desperate shortage of teachers no one will say that we should buy more teaching machines of this character and pump material and knowledge into people and gradually do away with the need for the human contact of the teacher with the child, which to me is of the very greatest importance.
I should like to say a few words about auxiliaries. I have not been happy about this matter since the former Parliamentary Secretary introduced it in a debate a few weeks ago. I have been really worried about it because I do not know what the Ministry intends these auxiliaries to do. Stoke-on-Trent is employing numerous auxiliaries. We have our meals helpers, people who ensure that the children wash before they take their meal and that they have their meal under decent conditions and supervisors. We have our nursery assistants in infant schools who have been trained in our women's college for that work. We have employed secretaries not only in our secondary modern schools but also in our junior schools so that the humdrum work of taking money for milk and school meals is lifted from the backs of the teachers in order that they can do the job which they are trained to do.
If that is what we mean by auxiliaries, well and good, but for goodness sake let us make it clear as quickly as we


can that we do not intend to give these people twelve weeks' training and then put them in a class to teach. Unless the Minister does something about this quickly, he will have the serious position arising that directors of education in their desperation will ask these auxiliary helpers to go in front of a class and teach. I think far too much of our children for them to be made the victims of that kind of work. I hope that the Minister will tell the teaching profession, local education authorities and this House what the auxiliaries are for and what kind of jobs they will do.
Above all, the Minister must give the teaching profession much greater confidence in the Government and in education generally than it has had during the last twelve months. The profession must know, as other professions must know, that the Government do not intend to go on treating them shabbily. Unless this fear is taken from them, unless they know that as men and women who have been trained for a noble profession they will receive a proper salary and status and will be given not only the buildings of which we boasted last week, but the material and the opportunities to use the abilities of the children properly, the teachers will have no faith in us and we shall not be able to recruit the greater numbers of teachers that we ought to recruit.
Every profession needs confidence that the Government believe in it. If the Minister can do one job only and do it very well, it is within the next few weeks to restore the confidence which teachers have been lacking in the Ministry of Education over the last twelve months and to give them new hope for the future. Therefore, I call on the Minister to bring to his present

office a new drive, new initiative and planning in the Department, not only for the immediate needs, but for the country's long-term educational programme.
Let us begin at long last to take note of the numerous Committees and their Reports. We remember the Anderson Committee because it suited the Government to implement some of its proposals. Let us remember the Crowther Committee. Let the Parliamentary Secretary apply the recommendations of the Albemarle Report. Let us take note of the Robbins and other Committees as they report, Committees which have gone to a lot of trouble to consider the whole problem of education. Do not let us do with some of those Committees what we have done over the years with other Committees which have been set up—have a debate on them, push them away and forget about them until five or ten years afterwards, or sometimes for ever.
I am an ex-teacher and proud of the fact. I am proud of our present teachers. I am proud of our local education authorities and the work which they endeavour to do in difficult circumstances. Having said that, however, I am also concerned about the ordinary child. The clever child will find its level. There will be opportunities for most of the clever children. But what is good enough for the well-to-do children, and nothing less, must be good enough for the average child.
Smaller classes, better facilities and the question of teacher supply are vital and fundamental to an adequate, forward-looking education service which, in the words of the 1958 White Paper, can provide us with an education suitable for present and for future needs in the modern world.

10.30 p.m.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: I think we must recognise that basically this problem is financial and political. It depends on what share of the national income we are prepared to devote to education and the place which we are prepared to give education in the nineteen-sixties. One realises that finance must be limited, but the first thing which the new Minister must do is to lower the incremental period of the young teachers, because this is the time, particularly when they are married and have children, when they need the money. So point No. 1 is, please, please, please lower the incremental period as soon as possible.
In any discussion of the supply of teachers surely also the whole question of the supply of trained manpower arises, and this means not going into the problem of new universities halfheartedly but looking at it in a bold and imaginative way, as I am sure the new Minister would wish to do. Instead of arguing, for instance, whether Scotland should have one university or whether she should not, the Minister ought to persuade his Ministerial colleagues to lay down now four new universities preferably in areas where there is a persistently high rate of unemployment, because we have to look ahead into the 'seventies and 'eighties when men will be saying that if a boy or a girl does not go to a university that boy or that girl will not be properly educated. So please let the Minister look ahead.
There are, too, several less important matters which the Minister can get stuck into straight away, and one is the question of helping the child who is backward, possibly through sickness, possibly because the penny has not dropped in the academic sense. It is up to the Minister not only to lower the size of classes, but to provide special help for those pupils who particularly need it. I suggest, therefore, that he considers the problem of retired teachers, because many of them, while not able to tackle, at 65, 66 or 67 years of age, classes of from 35 to 40, would certainly be very willing to tackle pupils in groups of three or four. They would welcome it, because there is nothing sadder than

to see teachers in their sixty-seventh or sixty-eighth year withering away—I cannot think of any other expression for it —because they feel that the world no longer wants them. I know men who have enjoyed the first two, three or four months of retirement, but after that they gradually have become more and more bored, and this affects their health, and in education we certainly could make use of them. We could make use of them in that most difficult of all the teacher's problems, helping the youngster in a class of 40 who has fallen behind.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Mrs. Slater) has raised the question of the auxiliaries. I hope that the Minister will tell us exactly what the function, in his idea, of these auxiliaries will be. I would like to tell him what many of us on this side of the House think the function of auxiliaries ought to be. They ought to be competent, efficient secretaries who can help with that mammoth task of mechanical correcting. The Minister may say that if a teacher is worth his salt he will do his own correcting. I certainly know few colleagues who would wish to shirk this responsibility, but surely there is a difference in doing correction requiring the mature judgment of the expert, and mechanical correction which can be done by anybody of moderate education.
The sort of on-the-spot situation which occurs is this: one has to correct the work of 30 or 35 or 40 15-year-olds. How long does it take to correct the English essay of such a class? I will tell the Minister. It takes seven hours at least. I defy anybody to do it properly in under seven hours.
Suppose the teacher has a third-year class. That is 14 hours' work. Add to that the hours of correction, possibly 19 hours' work. Add to that 10 hours of specialist work, and we get to 30 hours' correction altogether if the job is to be done correctly. Hon. Members may say that I am exaggerating. But education cannot be conducted properly without this long laborious, even tedious, work going on. It is on this ground that we should provide people who will deal with the simple one-word answers and correct the fairly simple sums. That would relieve the staff of many of the chores in the first and second year.
What is important is not that mature judgment should be employed all the time on correction of every piece of work that is done but that the youngsters should know that someone is taking trouble, because unless they get it into their heads that the corrections are properly done they cease to take trouble. That is why the services of the auxiliaries should be devoted to correction.
There are also the difficulties of setting papers. It is important not that the youngsters should have two examinations a year but that they should get used to the technique of examination. It may be suggested that we should get rid of as many examinations as possible, but, after all, diplomas, certificates and examination results have become badges of success in the second half of the twentieth century. Whether we like that oar not, it is a fact.
It is only fair to the youngsters, therefore, that they should be trained in the technique. Too often pupils fail in examinations not because they have not done the work, are not clever enough or have not the knowledge but simply because they have not the technique or knack of doing examinations. The methodology requires practice. Here the auxiliary could help by the simple physical, laborious process of churning out suitable question papers on the work that has been done in class.
It is a question not only of getting more teachers but of improving the quality of our present teachers. What worries me is the process whereby the 17-year-old leaves school, goes straight to a training college or university and then becomes a teacher. That jump from one side of the teacher's desk to the other is unsatisfactory. It may be said that it has always happened. It has not. I am the last to defend National Service on the ground that it did people good, but taking people away and giving them a different experience for two years made them very much more effective teachers. I am the last to say that the Second World War did people good, but I am certain that many teachers in their 30s and 40s are much the better for having gone through a number of gruelling experiences. It is on these grounds that I think the Government ought to provide some

alien experience for teachers before they settle down for a long time behind the teacher's desk.
The Government ought to look again at the £10 million which is to be provided by the taxpayers for compensation for breach of contract in the case of troopships "Oxfordshire" and "Nevasa" which might be used to take young teachers to other countries. There are other uses for great ships, but the Government's mind ought to be working on this sort of thing. One suggestion may be relevant in view of the appointment of the new Parliamentary Secretary. Why should not many young potential teachers who will be taking gym classes be taken to the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 1964 on one of these ships, for which the Government will have to pay anyway?
This is the way in which the Minister's mind should be working, because if we merely taken a person from school, put him in a training course and then send him back to school, we will not get the type of teacher we all want.

10.40 p.m.

Mr. Frederick Willey: As this is the first education debate we have had since the sackings, and as the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. K. Thompson) is still a Member of this House, I am sure I speak for hon. Members on both sides when I say that he has everyone's sympathy. I do not regard a Parliamentary Secretary as being responsible for policy, as the right hon. Gentleman will no doubt be glad to know, but we appreciated the way in which the hon. Member stood up for his Department over the past years. I would not like to miss this opportunity of paying tribute to him.
We now welcome the right hon. Gentleman as Minister of Education. He is an eloquent and persuasive debater. I have had doubts, however. He was described as an intellectual, but I have carried out some research and I find that charge to be baseless, and I am very relieved to know it.
Although, as I have said, a Parliamentary Secretary is not responsible for the policy of his Department, the right hon. Gentleman, if he looks up his


speeches made while he was Parliamentary Secretary, will find that they gravely misled us and the nation. He was at the Ministry at a critical time, when steps should have been taken to avoid the crisis in which we now find ourselves. Although he recognised that the second bulge was coming, unfortunately neither he nor his Minister did anything about it.
More recently the hon. Gentleman also spoke with great vigour and eloquence in defending the Government's policy towards the universities, but that again is a disastrous policy. Unless something is done, we shall find ourselves in an even more serious position.
I welcome the appointment of the hon. Member for Lewisham, North (Mr. Chataway) as Parliamentary Secretary rather cursorily, because the latest information I have is from "Private Eye", which might be misleading. We look forward to hearing him during the next few months and we hope when we do that he will tell us of a change in Government policy. I say "few months" because no one expects the Government to last much longer than that.
We are obliged to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Mrs. Slater) for raising this subject, which is perhaps one of the most serious problems facing us. We should be enjoying our good fortune instead of feeling miserable about it. The country is fortunate in that for many years it has been enjoying an increasing birth rate. But apparently no one at the Ministry of Education realised that an increasing birth rate meant that an increasing number of children would be going to school.

Mr. Peter Walker: Mr. Peter Walker (Worcester) indicated dissent.

Mr. Willey: It is no good the hon. Member looking dissatisfied about that statement. We debated this issue a year ago and Sir David Eccles did not even deign to reply.
The other thing equally significant and important and encouraging is the "trend", which is the desire of more and more parents that their children should stay on at school after the statutory leaving age. But while more and more children are at

school and are staying on, we need more teachers.
We should equally welcome another development. Teachers nowadays look forward to a happy married life. We no longer think of women entering the teaching profession and remaining spinsters. We now expect that most of them will marry.
We have known about all this for many years. However, because of the coincidence of these three things about which we ought to be extremely happy and rejoice, we are in fact in awful difficulties. We have not got the teachers that we need because the Government have not faced their responsibilities and taken the necessary steps to provide them. This would be a difficult enough situation to face in any circumstances, but unfortunately for us we are about the only country in the world which has not taken steps in time in the face of such difficulties.
These phenomena are not peculiar to this country, but what is peculiar to this country is that we have done so little about them. We face a world in which the intense competition and the struggle for survival has, fortunately, been expressed largely in terms of education. It is those countries which spend adequate resources on their people which will be the best qualified and most powerful nations in the world. In this situation, I warn the right hon. Gentleman, because I know his tactical approach to this, that it is a waste of time to talk about spending more on education this year than we did last year. The question is, are we spending sufficient in the light of the world in which we live? If we are not, we are failing our people. We are not only failing the people of today, but those of the next generation. That is why I said that my hon. Friend had raised one of the most important issues which face the Government, and for which they are responsible.
I do not want to repeat the figures given by my hon. Friend, but the situation is particularly grave when we remember that during the next few years the schools will be facing a crisis of teacher supply against which the Government have taken no steps to safeguard them. We crossed the Rubicon before the right hon. Gentleman took up his


present appointment. That was done with the Report of the National Advisory Council on the Demand and Supply of Teachers. Before that Report was published, although we deployed before the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor all the facts and figures, and although every distinguished educationalist did the same, the staff in Curzon Street remained immune to our arguments.
More than twelve months ago there was a debate in the House on the supply of teachers. We got no response from the Government. This year, however. we received the Report of the National Advisory Council and Mr. Fulton in his preface to the Report called the attention of the Government to "the grave shortage" of teachers. It is interesting to note that on the day of our debate on education—and this shows that Parliamentary debates serve some purpose —the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor wrote to Mr. Fulton agreeing that there is "a grave shortage of teachers."
We therefore have at last the position that the Government have recorded that we are facing a grave shortage of teachers. They admit that if we continue to do what we are doing now, that if we carry out no educational reforms between now and 1970, in that year there will be a shortage of 50,000 teachers. It is, I suppose, something that we now have a clear admission of the difficulties that we are facing, and this acute crisis caused by the shortage of teachers. We now want to know what the Government are going to do about it. That is what the right hon. Gentleman has to tell us tonight. He must assure us that steps are being taken to deal with the situation before the next academic year.
The National Advisory Council says that there must be "a massive expansion of the base of higher education from which many more teachers can be drawn." Now will the right hon. Gentleman reconsider the speech that he made on the cuts in the grants to the University Grants Committee? Will he renounce his policy? Will he say that he was wrong? We now have information from all the universities that they cannot carry out even the Government's programme, but here is the National Advisory Council itself saying that there must be "a massive expansion" if this teacher crisis is to be overcome.
The right hon. Gentleman cannot provide for that massive expansion unless he drastically alters the present programme for university expansion. He can do nothing about the present training colleges because, to use his Ministry's own elegant phraseology, the training colleges are at the present time crowded up to one-third more than their normal accommodation. What is the right hon. Gentleman going to do? We now have a further report. The Ministry was not forthcoming about this when I questioned the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor. Everyone except the right hon. Gentleman knew what the Council had recommended. He was going to find out from the Chairman on the Wednesday following the weekend when he lost his office. But we knew what the Council had recommended. Why did not the Ministry publish it? Why did not we get it until last Thursday? We want immediate action.
The Council has said that we must provide 10,000 additional teacher training places. Is the right hon. Gentleman going to provide them? Has he started making provision for them? Again, we want some action before the next academic year. It is interesting to note what the Advisory Council says about this. It says that it is not for the moment reporting upon auxiliaries. After all the flapdoodle we heard from the Parliamentary Secretary in the last debate on education, the National Advisory Council says that we must immediately have 10,000 additional places in training colleges. It is upon this urgent and emergency recommendation that we want a statement from the right hon. Gentleman about Governmental action in the immediate future.
I want to deal with a few other points rather briefly. I agree with what my hon. Friends said about further education; in the various phases of further education we may well recruit people for teaching if we go about it properly. The right hon. Gentleman might look at the possibility. We ought also to look at the importance of keeping children at school in the sixth form, so as not to lose those of them who might well be attracted into teaching.
The right hon. Gentleman should therefore be seriously considering the complete revision of maintenance allowances for children in the sixth form staying on after school-leaving age. That is particularly important now, because we do not want to lose children who ought to stay an extra year in the sixth form because they have not had admission to universities and who might nevertheless make successful recruits to the teaching profession.
I lightened the heart of the Parliamentary Secretary's predecessor when we had the last debate on education, because I called for improvisation. But I did not call for it joyfully; I called for it because we are facing a situation in which we must improvise if we are to get more teachers. The right hon. Gentleman ought to do more about getting more day students at the training colleges. He ought to do more about temporary colleges for day students.
We never had any real response from the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor about the Trent Park-Southend scheme. That is the sort of thing that might set a precedent. In that sort of way we might garner more people into the teaching profession.
I should like the right hon. Gentleman to look at the possibility of sandwich courses at the teacher training colleges. Although this is not a particularly desirable project, it would result in greater use being made of the existing staffs and premises, and the provision of more teachers. I agree with what was said by my hon. Friend about part-time teachers. We know that there are 50,000 married women who are qualified to teach. I pay tribute to what has been done in the last twelve months to attract them back to the teaching profession, but I am not satisfied that sufficient has been done. A more individual appeal should be made. It has been suggested that it might be better if the husbands were approached rather Chan the wives. We cannot be satisfied that sufficient has been done to get enough teachers back into the schools to avoid a crisis in some parts of the country. A deficiency in the South and in Wales means that there is a serious shortage in parts of the Midlands and the North.
I am aware that a dilemma arises from the fact that there are more possible part-time teachers in the areas where there are a sufficient number of teachers already. We must try to persuade part-time teachers to go to schools in less desirable areas. The Minister must face the need for crash programmes at the universities. We must tell the university authorities that the money needed will be provided if they play their part. The authorities are not irresponsible people, they are not altogether enthusiastic about expansion. But the Government must ensure that there is no impediment. There is a desperate shortage of graduate teachers and especially teachers of science and mathematics.
We cannot wait for the Report of the Rabbins Committee. To use the words of the advisory committee, we know that it will recommend a massive expansion of higher education. But we have to take action now to meet the urgent problems which ace immediate. We cannot avoid the fact that this will cost a great deal of money. We must face the question of the status and pay of teachers. The fact remains that the greatest single obstacle to educational advance is the shortage of teachers, and that "log jamb" must be broken as quickly as possible. If the right hon. Gentleman is not prepared to renounce the views he held while he was at the Treasury, the sooner he leaves the Ministry the better. But I hope that now he has returned to Education he will recognise his responsibilities to education and at last see that something is done.

10.59 p.m.

Mr. Peter Walker: I am provoked to take part in this debate because I wish to support what was said by the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) in his concluding sentences, and because I was appalled at what was said by the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey). It is surprising for someone on the Opposition Front Bench to suggest that this Government have taken no note of the increase in the birth irate and the need to spend and provide more education. In 1951, in the last period of a Labour Government, the amount spent on education worked out at about 11s. per week per family of four. Today it has reached the level of about 32s. a week for a family


of four. Even accounting fox any rise in the cost of living and increased school-building costs, this is a very substantial increase in the amount spent on education. This has been shown in an increase in the number of schools built and completed, in a substantial increase in the number of places provided at universities, and in a substantial increase in the number of teachers. I believe that this Government have coped exceedingly well. I hope that they cope even better in the future.
I take great delight at the appointment of my right hon. Friend the new Minister of Education. Of all the past Parliamentary Secretaries to the Ministry of Education he was probably the most popular with the profession and with circles within education. I believe that in that sense the profession and all those interested in furthering education take delight in his appointment. I believe that they also take delight in the appointment of his Parliamentary Secretary. This is a very powerful team which will aid the further development of education.
I want to say a few words in support of the hon. Member for West Lothian. It is important that we should ensure that teachers, not only prior to taking up their appointments but thereafter, are given the opportunity to have a general wide view of the problems of the world in order to impart to those whom they teach the facets of the changing world in which we live. Ordinary teachers, because of their restricted financial resources, are limited in the amount of travel they can undertake and in the facilities at their disposal to keep abreast of the changing world and economic events. I ask my right hon. Friend to give very serious consideration to ways by which teachers at later stages in their career—say, in their 30s or 40s—can travel and see something of the world and perhaps see something of factories and industries in this country. They would become all the better teachers for this experience.

Mr. Dalyell: Would not the horn. Gentleman agree that it might be useful to institute some sort of scheme, not perhaps of sabbatical years, which would take too long, but certainly sabbatical terms, in the light of experiments pioneered at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge?

Mr. Walker: I am very much in favour of all such ideas and hope that my right hon. Friend will give them serious consideration.
The Ministry of Labour has failed completely to give children a clear conception of the extent of the opportunities available to them on leaving school. Many children from grammar, secondary modern and technical schools have little conception of the wide range of opportunities available to them on leaving school. Although I strongly commend the efforts of individual officers of the Youth Employment Service, I do not think that the Service has managed yet to put across to the average child that he has the good fortune to live in this country and have available to him a wide range of opportunities. I should like the Service to co-operate with the Ministry so that far more is done to put over the availability of careers to the individual schoolchild. At present this has been left to careers masters. They have practical knowledge of one career only, teaching. In any case, they have all the burdens of their ordinary teaching duties. In all probability, they do very little of a positive nature to be acquainted with the type of careers avaliable to his students. Far more could be done to ensure that industry and commerce enter schools to put before the children the availability of careers.
I should like to say a word on the topic of management education. This is a sphere in which, as a nation, we are far behind our competitors in the world of industry and trade. There is tremendous scope for a substantial improvement in the facilities for management education in this country. I believe that my right hon. Friend's predecessor did a great deal, as yet unrecognised, towards this end, and the manner in which he has introduced the various new certificates and diplomas in management studies is a useful step forward.
I am encouraged by recent replies from my right hon. Friend as to the increased availability of teachers trained in advanced business studies. But even with this encouragement we are still a long way behind Western Germany and the United States. I hope that in the coming Parliamentary year


we shall see far greater interest in this topic than previously. It is not enough for studies to be under way to see whether or not Oxford or Cambridge are willing to provide more facilities to this end. This is an urgent necessity for a commercial nation such as our own, and I hope that one of the spheres in which my right hon. Friend will be particularly enthusiastic will be that of improving the facilities for management education.

11.6 p.m.

The Minister of Education (Sir Edward Boyle): I should first like to thank the hon. Lady the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Mrs. Slater) and the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) for the welcome which they gave me tonight in my first debate as Minister of Education.
If the House will permit me to say so, it is not without certain emotion that I rise to speak at this moment. I follow someone in Sir David Eccles who, I think, was recognised on all sides in the teaching profession, in the educational world and in this House as a man of broad and constructive ideas on the sort of society we wish to see in this country. [Interruption.] I do not wish to be controversial tonight, but I am echoing very many tributes to him that were paid in the educational press a fortnight ago. Certainly he is a right hon. Gentleman who fought extremely hard in the cause of education and to ensure that it got its full share of the nation's resources.
I am also glad that the hon. Member for Sunderland, North paid tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool. Walton (Mr. K. Thompson). My hon. Friend has been a member of the Government for some years. I think that in all the offices he has held he was a most efficient Parliamentary Secretary, and I was particularly glad to hear a tribute paid to him tonight.
First, I want to say two things. It will be my job—and I shall discharge it to the best of my ability—to see that education has a proper share of the total resources that we can devote to the social services. When one looks at the figures at the present time—both the total amount that we devote to education and

the total share of the Budget that goes to the social services—I think the Government's record is not one to be ashamed of.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor, winding up the debate the other night, pointed out very properly that in Britain at present we are spending a greater percentage of our national income on education than any European country, except Sweden. I quote this figure from memory, but I am pretty sure that it is correct. If one looks this year at the total amount that has been spent on education in England, Wales and Scotland, including the universities, we find that the total sum is, I think, £1,143 million.
Another statistic that is worth bearing in mind is this. When we came to power in 1951 the total proportion of supply and expenditure devoted to social and communal services was about 33 per cent., and it has now gone up to 43½ per cent. Without in any way wishing to sound complacent, I believe the Government have done a good job over social service expenditure as a whole, and I do not think we have anything to be ashamed of in the total amount of the nation's resources which are devoted to education.
I want to add to that a personal word. I certainly look on the years that I have spent as Parliamentary Secretary as among the happiest I can remember, and to me the most worth while part of any job at the Ministry of Education is the opportunity that it gives one of firsthand personal contact with those who are doing the work in the sphere of education in this country. The core of our educational system, of course, is the ordinary teacher, teaching perhaps under very difficult circumstances and doing his or her best with ordinary children who started life with no particular advantages.
I always think that it is perhaps not very useful to quote Bernard Levin from this side of the House, but in his introduction to one of Wesker's plays he says Chat one of the delights of Wesker is his passion for portraying the lives of the ordinary family not because they are saints but because they are not. That is how I feel now about the work of the teacher in his or her great task of teaching children to live their lives in


our community, lives which, if they are not ideal, are better for the training which the children have received.
I can fully agree with hon. Members who have spoken that there is no greater problem today which faces our educational system than this question of teacher supply, and it is especially interesting to me, coming back to the Ministry after three years, to see how this subject has developed in the interval. I do not want to be discourteous to those waiting for the next debate, and I will not be long, but I also do not want to be discourteous to those hon. Members who have taken part in this debate which I should be if I did not reply to some of the points which have been raised by the hon. Member for Sunderland, North (Mr. Willey) and others.
There are two reasons why this problem of teacher supply has got more serious since I was last in the Ministry of Education. The first is the unexpected increase in the school population. It is fair to say that in 1957— and I mention this because I was twitted about something which I then said—the wastage among teachers had not become so drastic; it has become more acute than we then thought. What has caused the change? First, the prospective increase in the child population from an actual figure of 6·9 millions in 1960, rising to 7·8 millions in 1970, and to 8·6 millions in 1980, or an increase of about 25 per cent in twenty years.
The other important factor which we have to face is the wastage of women teachers. I readily agree that the actual phrase is not an ideal term, but it is a term which we commonly use. Assuming a continuation of present trends by 1970 only about 40 out of every 100 women entering service will still be in post four years later compared with 50 now. The cause is earlier marriages and earlier child bearing, and although I am no expert on demography, I understand that people are tending to marry sooner and are hawing families earlier. That has the same effect for the schools as a rise in the birth rate, although whether there is a net rise in substitution—I think that that is the correct phrase—is another matter.
Coming back to the situation in the Ministry, one thing which strikes me is

the very much higher figure which, quite rightly, we are spending today on teacher training. The hon. Lady the Member or Stoke-on-Trent, North and the hon. Member for Sunderland, North both spoke of this, but I am not sure that the hon. Lady got it quite right. She left out one important development.
In 1958 we took the decision to create 12,000 new places, and in 1959 an additional 4,000 places. After that there was the decision to add a further 8,000 places —a substantial total. This expansion is very much reflected in the figures of expenditure on teacher training as well as in the numbers of teacher training colleges.
The intake to training colleges has risen from 12,518 in 1957 to 16,461 in 1961–62, and it looks to me, from the latest information I have, that, despite all the problems caused by the year of intermission and the fact that, for the first time, in 1962–63 the colleges will have to accommodate three intakes simultaneously, the colleges this year are likely to admit over 16,450 new students. This is very close to the record intakes of the last two years, and, in the peculiarly difficult circumstances of this year, it is an extremely creditable figure.
In 1956–57, the total cost to public funds of teacher training was just over £14 million. Last year, the last year for which I have figures, it was just under £35 million. A small proportion of that is represented, I think, by the capital contribution by the voluntary bodies, but the overwhelming majority of it comes directly out of public funds of one kind or another. I mention this because I am not sure that these figures are always known. During recent years, there has been a substantial increase in the capacity of our teacher training colleges and a very considerable increase in the cost to public funds for teacher training.
As the House knows, we have a continuing expansion programme. We shall have a further expansion programme for 1963 and 1964 and a continuing expansion programme beyond that. Next year, we shall have places from the expansion programme and redundant premises kept on and some temporary day provision coming into us. I can tell the House that in 1963–64 the training colleges will be able to take an intake of well over 17,000.

Mr. Dalyell: Does the Minister agree that the really critical statistics are for the intakes of those who are going to be graduates in mathematics and science? Has he those figures available?

Sir E. Boyle: I have not the figures for graduates tonight, but I will gladly send the latest figures we have to the hon. Gentleman. Incidentally, the hon. Gentleman referred to my speech in the university debate and said that if I still held those views I ought to leave office. I do not think that I should be drawn on that subject tonight, partly because I am no longer responsible for answering in the House on the universities and partly because I think that even the Press might agree that a fresh reshuffle just now would be more exciting than people generally want.
I come now to the temporary day colleges. On 17th May, my predecessor in office wrote to local education authorities saying that the short-term implications of our teacher supply situation were being considered at that time but the Minister had decided to initiate straightaway certain emergency measures. In the first place, authorities were invited to submit proposals for the establishment of temporary day colleges in suitable existing premises in populated areas; secondly, authorities were asked to keep on for the time being, if they could, premises which were scheduled to be abandoned and replaced.
As regards the temporary day colleges, there is no doubt about the readiness of local education authorities to help in the well populated areas. There are difficulties, of course, in finding suitable plaices, but quite a number of authorities have found, or are expected to find, suitable premises. I hope that in the end we may manage to secure the establishment of as many as ten temporary colleges.
As regards redundant premises, under the expansion programme a number of existing colleges are being replaced by new and larger colleges on different sites, but we are carrying on discussions with authorities about means whereby we can retain some redundant accommodation in use for the time being in an effective way. It looks as though something like 1,500 places may be secured by the retention of premises of that kind.
I am glad that a number of hon. Members have spoken of means to improve the training college output. Obviously, looking at the supply situation, there are a number of ways in which to effect improvement. I shall say presently something on the subject of married women and part-time teachers. The hon. Member referred to the recommendation of the National Advisory Council for extending still further the plant. I cannot give an answer on that tonight, but it is important to get this aspect into perspective, because even if we had those 10,000 places, they would not yield teachers until 1968. Even by 1970, the proposal would make a difference of only well under 6,000 teachers out of a total shortage of 49,000. I do not say that to underrate the importance of the proposal, but simply to point out that we must in any event consider what further short- or medium-term measures we can take to improve the situation during the years immediately ahead.
The means to improve the output from the training colleges are extremely important and there are a number of possibilities. So far, we have had recourse to overcrowding—I must be frank about it—and we have achieved a good deal by this means. It may well be that a bit more can yet be done by day and lodging students. As a whole, however, colleges are near their limit in crowding up.
The sort of alternatives that we are considering involve various measures to double-bank the use of accommodation or to accelerate the course so that at least by far the greater part of the content of the course can be covered in less than the three calendar years. This method involves greater use of college premises, which are, on an average, used for initial training on 34–35 weeks of the year. There are considerable possibilities here. As to making greater use of our existing investment, this is the sort of matter on which I hope, over the months to come, to have as fruitful discussion as I possibly can, because it is of great importance.
Another possibility, but I do not think that it can lead to very large results, is for colleges to make use of other existing institutions, particularly technical colleges. This is already done to some


extent, for example, by the attendance of training college students at neighbouring technical colleges for certain academic courses like science. It is clearly sensible that we should explore the possibilities of establishing such links, although I realise—this is a matter which, naturally, causes me considerable concern—that the technical colleges tend to have little spare capacity owing to the rapidly-growing demand for further education courses.
The "bulge," which has gone through the secondary schools, has now reached the regional technical colleges as well as the institutions of more advanced learning. However often we debate the universities and the institutions of higher learning, I hope that we shall never forget the importance of the general run of technical colleges, which contribute so much to our national life.
I want to say a word about Trent Park, to which reference has been made, because one form of co-operation which has attracted special attention has been the link achieved between the Middlesex authority's college at Trent Park, near Barnet, and the training college at Southend, under which a small group of first-year teacher training students spent a year out-stationed in Southend, where they were able to receive instruction in art, music and drama at the technical college. I am told that the arrangements have worked due to everyone's enthusiasm, and they have been extended. At the same time, however, I do not pretend that the conditions are ideal and we have not thought it right positively to press this example on other colleges.
A certain amount has been said, rightly, concerning married women and part-time teachers. When one considers closing the gap between supply and demand, of which the hon. Lady the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North rightly spoke, this is a field of particular importance. As the House knows, the Ministry launched a campaign early last year to attract married women to return to the schools. The immediate aim of this was to alleviate the difficulties arising this year, because it was the year of intermission when students were not coming out of the training colleges because of the start of the three-year course.
The Ministry looked on this as only the first stage in a continuing drive to recruit married women to compensate for the factor of wastage. The national campaign was intended to provide an initial impetus from the centre for the recruiting drives undertaken by individual authorities. The recruitment of married women teachers will always depend largely on local efforts because these teachers are generally available for employment only in their own neighbourhood. When I speak of local authorities, I hope that we shall not forget bodies like the divisional executives which have a considerable responsibility in this field, the more local bodies who know the local circumstances.
In the first year of the campaign, 4,660 married women were recruited, of whom 2,750 returned to full time and 1,910 to part time teaching. As I told the hon. Member for Sunderland, North in an Answer only last week, between 1st February and 1st June this year 2,485 married women were recruited, which represented an increase of 30 per cent. over the corresponding period of last year.

Mr. Willey: I have not asked this before, but can the hon. Gentleman say what the wastage is among the married women recruited back to schools? Is there yet any evidence of how stable this employment is?

Sir E. Boyle: No, I am informed that as yet we have no figures on that. I agree with the hon. Member that this is an important matter. I shall keep a close eye on it. It may be that it is a subject that we could discuss in an Adjournment debate. I venture to express to the House the hope that we may be able to go back to the good practice of the last Parliament of having Private Members' Fridays on which such topics as this could be discussed.

Mrs. Slater: How far are these married women included in the quota? I am not sure about the quota.

Sir E. Boyle: Nor am I after only a fortnight at the Ministry. I am sorry that I am not doing so well tonight, but the hon. Lady will recognise the difficulties. I shall certainly make a point of communicating with her on the matter.

Mrs. Slater: This is important because, as the hon. Gentleman has just said, these women can be recruited only in the areas in which they live. Therefore, a local authority which is energetic enough to attract them back to school ought not to have them reckoned in its quota and so reduce its other staff.

Sir E. Boyle: I understand how much feeling there is about the quota. On the other hand, as a Birmingham Member of Parliament I know how necesary it was a year or two ago to have a method of this bind. In my first fortnight as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry I was asked by Sir John Crowder why the cost of school places was going up each year, and I told him that he was being pessimistic. I hope that I have learnt a great deal more since and that I have not got rusty.
The number of part-time teachers has increased pretty rapidly in recent years, from 8,750 in January, 1957, to about 22,000 in January, 1962. This increase largely reflects the growing employment of married women returning to teaching. On the most optimistic assumption about the rate of increase of part-time teachers, I hope that they could reduce the gap of 50,000 teachers—the gap usually referred to between supply and demand— to between 20,000 and 30,000. They have a very important part to play. The Ministry is ready to consider all kinds of ways to find how we can get more full-time married women and part-time teachers in the schools. I look on this as one of the most important single tasks. This is a matter where more inquiry might prove fruitful.

Mr. Dalyell: Will the Minister ensure that the part-time teachers do their share of the home work which has to be done by the teacher in his or her home, on the ground that they are not only part-time teachers but share the responsibility which is given naturally to full-time teachers?

Sir E. Boyle: I took careful note of the hon. Member's comments on the point about correcting work, and of the many types of work which fall to teachers in the schools. Of course, the employment of part-time teachers does give rise to problems of organisation, devising the timetable, the allocation of

responsibilities in the schools, and I know that part-time teachers have been accepted with more enthusiasm in some schools and areas than in others, but the National Advisory Council has recognised that they must be relied on to make a major contribution to filling the gap between supply and demand; and it is going to conduct a survey of how these teachers are used, on what problems have arisen, how they have been solved, and what are the deterrents to the return to part-time employment of former teachers. It is a field in which a further survey is very important indeed for the future of the primary schools.
I want to reply to two other points. The hon. Lady gave me notice kindly that she was going to raise the question of the auxiliaries. I have not much to add to the famous speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton on this subject. The proposal was intended to help teachers in the infants' schools by recruiting to those schools staff to work in the classrooms under the direction of qualified teachers. The idea was this would enable the skill and experience of the qualified teachers to be deployed to the best advantage during the period of shortage. I think the idea has been that we would recruit auxiliaries mainly from girls leaving school after a full secondary course and from older married women. I can assure the hon. Lady that no decisions will be taken either on the principle of this scheme or on particular aspects of its operation till I have received—I almost said, till my right hon. Friend has received: till I myself have received—the advice of the National Advisory Council on this subject.
Finally, on teaching machines, to which the hon. Lady referred. I confess I have not seen these at work. I have not had first-hand experience of them myself, but I quite agree that we must bear in mind very closely what these are for. They are not alternatives to the teacher so much as means whereby the work of the teacher can be rendered more efficient in the schools. We must be clear in our minds just what these machines can achieve and what they cannot.
I do not want to continue further because I have spoken for some time and there are other debates to come. I should only like to say, having had this debate tonight, that this is the subject which, naturally, I think I can say, will occupy more of my time than any other so far as the work is the Ministry is concerned. There are an enormous number of problems which have to be faced today, but I am glad to think that in the educational field there are many opportunities also. I notice that under Sir David Eccles the work of the Ministry has broadened. That is perfectly right when one considers the greater sums of public money which are allocated to it. Certainly it will be my hope during the time, be it long or short, in which I am in my present office, to make such first-hand contact as I can with those doing the work in the schools, and with those who are helping to administer our education system. In coming back to the Ministry I am very well aware that I have much to learn, and I only hope that it will be my lot to contribute something to the development of our education system.

Mr. Dalyell: Mr. Dalyell rose—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Robert Grimston): Order. The hon. Member has exhausted his right to speak on this Question. Mr. Mellish.

Orders of the Day — HOMELESS FAMILIES, LONDON

11.33 p.m.

Mr. R. J. Mellish: Following the important debate we have just had, I want to raise a subject which really is a heartache story for many thousands of our fellow citizens living in London—or trying to live in London. We gave notice we would raise this story tonight, and the story has for its heading, I suppose,"The Homeless Families of London." When we talk of those homeless families we ought to remember that, though they are not all Londoners, the vast majority of them are, of course, British—although this is a problem which, I know, is not confined to London, but which afflicts many of our great cities and towns throughout the land.
It is not the first time that we have raised the subject in the House. London Members will recall that we raised it last year. The situation was very grim then. We got from the former Minister of Housing and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Luton (Dr. Hill), a great number of platitudes. He said in effect that it was a problem which could be solved by the London County Council and that it ought to be far more energetic. If I remember his speech well enough, it was to the effect that at the end of the day the London County Council could solve it and it did not need much effort from the Government. I hope the new Minister of Housing and Local Government will not say that. He had better not. I assure him that if he does it will be regarded by those who read his words as an absolute insult to the intelligence of our people, particularly those who are homeless.
I put it to the right hon. Gentleman simply, shortly, fairly and honestly that if tonight we provided a home for every family in London which is homeless at this very moment, I guarantee that in six months' time the problem would be as big again. So let us clearly understand what we are talking about. We are talking about homeless families in this the greatest city in the world, and if we dealt with this problem tonight, there are thousands of others who would become homeless overnight. I will tell the right hon. Gentleman why later on, but


for the moment let us look at the problem as it is now.
There was a decrease in the number of homeless in London in December last, probably because some of the landlords had the Father Christmas spirit and waited until Christmas had passed before kicking people out. But in January the London County Council, the housing authority for London, was responsible for looking after 616 homeless families, which represented 2,860 people. At this very moment there are 868 families in London without a home. That represents 4,136 persons without a home in one city. I do not want to be too emotional about it, but it makes me almost want to be sick because the suffering which comes from such a situation has to be seen to be believed.
I understand that at the moment 10 additional families a week without a home are coming to the care of the London County Council. That represents 40 people per week. With that increase taking place, I ask the Minister to be a mathematician and work out how long it will be on the basis of what I have said about the recent past before the problem is again as large as it is now even if he solved it tonight.
Where do the people come from, and what sort of people are they? Is this merely something for London to deal with in its own capacity or does it call for the Government to do something on a wider, national basis? I hope to show that it is a Government responsibility, and I and my hon. Friends will regard it as an insult if the Minister attempts to convey the idea that this is purely a matter for the London County Council.
To analyse the figures, first of all, the vast majority of these people are British. To indicate the reasons why London is getting these large numbers, I will quote some of my hon. Friends who represent boroughs in Lancashire. One of my hon. Friends—I will not mention his name—(tells me that he has not had a housing case for three years. Indeed, he has some hundreds of empty houses, and his council's job is to fill them, but the people are no longer there. Because of the depression in the cotton industry, they have left Lancashire and come to London. That is great planning! One would have thought that there would

have been a desire on the part of the Government, and a tremendous effort by them, to keep the people where they want to be—in their home town. I cannot believe anyone wants to come to London and face some of the conditions here; but if there is a depression and they are out of work and suffering, they will come to London because they believe that, because of the policy of full employment, this is the only place where one can earn read money.
Tonight I had a meeting with some homeless families. The right hon. Gentleman's Parliamentary Private Secretary was there and can confirm what I say. They were a sample section. Some of their stories were repetitions of what I have already heard. I give one illustration. It was the case of a lady, born and bred in London, who married five or six years ago and went into furnished accommodation for £6 a week. She does not complain about that. But then she had the temerity to have children. I gather that most married women do. That was the end. There is no control over furnished accommodation and she was evicted. She has been nearly a year in a rest centre.
What sort of affluent society is it that allows that to happen? What sort of people are we in this House to let £6 a week be charged for one room—which is all this lady had? Can any Member opposite justify that? I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not sneer when we talk of control. There is a section of the community which exploits our people. These landlords would get £10 a week if they could get away with it. Yet nothing is done.
These people are victims of the Government's lack of national planning, which has resulted in unemployment in many parts of the North and Scotland, driving people to London to seek work.
Some time ago we had another debate on the homeless. We were told by the late Minister that we had not got the facts. I am glad the Prime Minister sacked him. The present Minister could not be worse than he was, or the present Home Secretary was when he was Minister of Housing and Local Government. They were both great characters. We ware told that there would be a special survey to find the facts. The results of that survey have


been issued. It was conducted not by the Labour Party or by the L.C.C., nor by the Conservative Party trying to defend itself. These were independent-minded people. They said:
Rent increases since the Rent Act have been concentrated most heavily on the margin of property changing hands as new tenants move in. Rents for continuing tenancies have not risen as quickly as for new tenancies but the margin at which larger increases are being made is being extended as something like 20,000 dwellings in the county are ' de-controlled ' every year by the movement or death of their tenants. Low-income families with young children have diminishing chances of obtaining accommodation at a modest rent and they are largely excluded from consideration for house purchase loans.
What is the right hon. Gentleman going to do about that situation not only in London but elsewhere? Does he defend a policy which means that when property becomes decontrolled the sky is the limit? How can he defend it today when there is such a shortage of accommodation? The survey said that because of the Rent Act and the fact that properties are becoming decon-trolled at the rate of 20,000 a year, rents are so exorbitant that people cannot consider them
The Government used to say that everything was being blamed on the Rent Act, but even if a person is not directly affected by it he finds that indirectly it is making property scarcer. One of the primary causes of our problem today is the Rent Act, which made a bad position worse and has meant that ordinary, humble families are unable to get rooms. The vast majority of people just want rooms—nothing more.
Now let us consider house purchase. This is what the survey team said:
House prices have been rising very steeply —in the London region they rose by over a third between January, 1959 and December, 1961, and the increase within the county must have been at least as great. Those who can afford to buy a house in London are in a privileged position compared with tenants. They can make substantial capital gains as long as house prices continue to rise, and borrowers have the added encouragement of a tax allowance on interest repayments. High prices are excluding all but the most prosperous wage-earning families from house-purchase unless they have large savings or already own a house which can be sold to provide capital.
To-day no man with a wife and two children, and earning less than £20 a week, can get a mortgage. Let the Minis-

ter refute that. If a man goes to a building society and says, "My wife and I have a joint income of £20 a week, will you let me have a mortgage?", the building society says that it is not interested in what his wife earns but only in what he earns as a basic wage. The party opposite is supposed to believe in a property-owning democracy. Do hon. Gentleman opposite really believe in it? What steps are they taking to enable those earning less than £20 a week to buy their homes?
I believe in a genuine property-owning democracy, and to this end I would encourage those who wanted to buy their homes to do so by giving them a 100 per cent. mortgage, to be repaid at a low, fixed rate of interest. They would then know exactly what their commitments were until the loans were repaid. Is it too much to ask the party opposite to look at this again? Is it not possible in this so-called affluent society to find money for this purpose? Hon. Gentlemen prate about this being a property-owning democracy, but they do nothing to help those who want to buy their own houses.
Let us consider what was said about the kind of people who are homeless. The report said:
Taking the findings of the three surveys together the homeless, in recent years, have usually been married couples between 20 and 40 years of age, generally having two or three children under 16. About half the adults were born in London or the Home Counties, up to three-quarters in Britain, and most of the remainder were born in Eire."—
The Government do not propose to ban the Irish coming into this country—
The majority have always lived in London or have been here at least five years before becoming homeless. The husband's wages are below average for London, tending in 1961 to cluster between £10 and £14 a week
A man earning between £10 and £14 a week is out. He is despised. He has no hope of owning his own home. The majority of people in this wage bracket do semi-skilled or unskilled work. These are the people who are homeless. These are the people who have done no harm to anybody, or hurt anybody. Their crime is that they have the temerity to earn only £10 to £14 a week. These are the people who sweep the roads, clear the sewers, and perform other similar essential jobs. Britain could not do without these people but, because of


their low wages, they are precluded from getting mortgages to buy their own houses.
The survey also mentions private landlords, for whom I have nothing but contempt. It says:
Private landlords have less and less incentive to provide housing for wage-earners with young children. Young families take up more room than childless couples or single persons; they cannot afford high rents but cause greater wear and tear on the property; and they may bring trouble and unwelcome publicity if they are evicted. If a wage-earner has a low insecure income—and many wage-earners' incomes are low and insecure by nature of their work—no security of tenure, and no relatives or friends able to house them or to 'speak for' them to the landlord—then he is liable to become homeless. Very many of the families coming to the welfare department are in this condition.
Is the Minister going to tolerate that? Are private landlords going to be allowed to turn their backs on people for the crime they have committed merely of having children? What sort of a nation are we that, in 1962, we can stand for that? We bandy words about being an affluent society, when hon. Members on both sides of the House agree that the attitude of the majority of private landlords is, "If you have children you are not wanted." The survey proves that.
The owning of private property and its exploiting for profit should be dealt with by law. It is immoral that some people should be getting fat sums of money out of others in this sort of misery, and the time has come when the nation should say frankly and firmly that the right to own property for private rented purposes has gone for ever. Surely owning a house or living in a house is as much a social need as a hospital. Is it not right that a person should have a roof over his head?
It is not as though there is no empty property in London. I will give the Minister some figures which I think will be news to him. If the fact was that there was no empty accommodation in London into which people could move the Minister would have a stronger case, but that is not so. In Camberwell there are 251 empty properties; in Lambeth, 1,742; in Lewisham, 1,410; in Paddington, 1,950; in Wandsworth, 1,300; in Westminster, 904 and in

Woolwich, 712. These figures have been given by valuation officers. They are not imaginary. They refer to properties in London which are empty at this moment because, in many cases, the landlords are keeping them unoccupied in order to get vacant possession of the whole of the houses and so be able to sell them for inflated prices.
As we are talking, over 4,000 people are crying out for homes. If the Minister adds up the figures I have given he will see that the total is substantial. Can anyone wonder that we say that local authorities should have the power of acquisition, or that wherever local authorities can find that sort of property they have the right to say, "We are going to put a family in there." If landlords want to appeal, let the Minister set up an appeals tribunal for them; it would be unique for the landlords to have to appeal instead of the tenants.

The Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs (Sir Keith Joseph): Local authorities have power to apply for compulsory purchase orders in some circumstances.

Mr. Mellish: I am coming to that point.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Perhaps I ought to intervene now with a warning. The discussion of legislation is not in order in a debate on the Third Reading of the Consolidated Fund Bill. We must not stray too far in that direction.

Mr. Mellish: I can assure you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that all I ask from the Government is a sensible approach to the housing problem.

Mr. Geoffrey Wilson: The hon. Member says that these houses are being kept empty by the private landlords for sale. To whom are they sold? Surely there are families coming into them. They may be paying a higher price for the houses, but they need homes.

Mr. Mellish: I had hoped that the hon. Gentleman had been listening to what I have been saying. Some people who earn £25 or £30 a week might be able to raise the mortgages to buy such houses. But where empty property exists it should be made available to those in


the greatest need. I ask the Government to tell us how the local authorities can acquire such premises for these people. I am not arguing that London is jammed up and that there are no empty properties. If there were a proper scheme of distribution and the local councils had control, such property could be made available to those in greatest need. That should be the test and not the amount of money which a man has in his pocket.
I understand that the Minister received a deputation of my colleagues and friends from County Hall who are responsible for dealing with this problem. I think that they are making magnificent efforts to overcome the difficulties. But what bewilders them is that each time they are successful in solving some part of the problem the position is made worse again because so many other families are found to be in need.
Surely it is monstrous that non-residential property like offices and factories should continue to be built when there is such a demand for housing accommodation. But one of the problems facing the councils is that if permission to build a block of offices is refused the compensation which has to be paid is fantastic. Therefore, because of the financial implications, councils are not inclined to refuse such permission. Certain funds and powers are needed, which it would not require new legislation to provide, to deal with the situation that when factory premises are vacated they must be used again as a factory. It should be possible to convert the premises into houses. We ask that office building should be subject to control by some kind of system analagous to the Industrial Development Certificate. What does the Minister intend to do to help councils to control the present spate of office building?
When do the Government propose to do something about the present interest rates? Do they still defend a situation in which people have to borrow money at an interest of 7 per cent.? What about the Rent Act? Does the Minister still maintain that the position of the Government is that no modification of the legislation is contemplated at any time? I remember the present Home Secretary, when he was Minister of Housing and Local Government, giving his idea of how the Rent Act would

work. He thought that those who could afford to pay more would transfer to the more expensive properties and those who could afford less would move into the less expensive properties and that there would be a general sorting out.
I come from Bermondsey, which is a working-class area of London. In a block of flats in my constituency there was a typical example of what went on. Some people moved into three-room flats and some into two, and so on, as their families grew up or increased. Then the 1957 Act was passed. There is no more movement, because if one family gives up a three-room flat in a block of privately-owned flats, instead of the flat being given to a family living into a two-room flat, there is an immediate fantastic increase in rent which debars the family living in the two-room flat from taking the three-room flat. Does the Minister believe that? I can give him examples. The effect of the Rent Act which the previous Minister expected has not materialised.
We ask that owners of London residential property which becomes decontrolled and who are about to sell or evict should be required to give first refusal to the council. Is there anything immoral about that. Local authorities, whether they are Tory ox Labour, are at least trying to do a genuine job. All local authorities are honest in their endeavours. The way in which housing lists are run is a credit to Britain. I have hardily ever heard of a case in which there has bean a charge of corruption. The whole test is of need. Private landlords are not concerned with need. Does the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) desire to question that?

Mr. G. Wilson: There are complaints about the housing lists in some quarters.

Mr. Mellish: I am talking about corruption. One does not find any corruption in the administration of housing lists. If the hon. Gentleman knows of any, he should say so. We should clean that up. In London there are no such cases. Private landlords are naturally not concerned with need. They are concerned only with the amount of money available.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) is not here, because a perfect example of this has


occurred in his constituency. Ten houses were built by a builder—a good and genuine type. He built them fox private letting, but a speculator came along. He bought the ten houses for £5,000 each. He bought them in one fell swoop for £50,000. They were nice houses built by private enterprise. The speculator did not let them. He in turn sold them for £7,500 each. Can anybody honestly say that any homeless family has a chance with that sort of speculation going on? The speculator sold them and made £2,500 a house overnight. This was legal and proper, and he is a very good Tory. He its a very smart business man. We want that sort of thing stopped.
We ask for rent tribunals to be extended—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but if he is asking for legislation it is out of order.

Mr. Mellish: I am not asking for legislation. The Minister can tell us whether legislation is required. The Government must tell us what they intend to do. It does not need legislation to extend the use of rent tribunals, as I understand it. The Minister could do it by regulation, I believe. We ask for rent tribunals to be extended to unfurnished accommodation. Why should not they be, so that people could ask for their rents to be lowered? Why should not they be able to go to independent bodies and claim that their rents are unfair? The tribunal should have power to take into account the conditions in Which people live.

Mr. Graham Page: Even supposing that that did not require legislation, which I should doubt, I remind the hon. Gentleman that over half those who become London's homeless come from furnished dwellings where there is a controlled rent.

Mr. Mellish: That is the whole point which the hon. Gentleman does not know about. There is no controlled rent for furnished accommodation. The sky is the limit. The only thing about furnished accommodation is that there is a certain security of tenure. People

can complain to a rent tribunal that their rent ought to be lower. The tribunal can say that the rent should be lower, but the length of time for which the people can stay there afterwards is limited by law. It is a deterrent in itself, because the people know that if they go to the tribunal and ask for their rent to be reduced they will lose their home anyway. Someone I know is paying £6 a week for furnished accommodation. She knows that she could get it reduced, but dare not got to the tribunal because she knows she would be kicked out anyway.

Mr. Graham Page: I want to get this point clear. The hon. Gentleman was asking the House to approve his suggestion that rent tribunals should be given power over unfurnished dwellings. My point is that rent tribunals as they are applied to furnished dwellings are not much protection to tenants at the moment if half those who become homeless come from furnished dwellings. I think the hon. Gentleman is wrong in saying that there is no control of rent. Even if the tenant did leave, there is still the order for that specific rent on those premises.

Mr. Mellish: The Minister can confirm or deny this later, but I think the hon. Member is wrong about the control situation. So far as unfurnished accommodation in London is concerned, a house rated at over £40 is automatically decontrolled. Even if a house is rated at only £20 and the existing tenant moves, it is automatically decontrolled. As to furnished accommodation, whatever rent the landlord asks for must be paid, and the only control that exists is that the tenant, if objecting to the rent, can go to a tribunal. The tribunal will then set what it regards as a fair rent, but it can only give a certain security of tenure—in most cases, I believe, three months. After three months the tenant has to go.
In fact, those living in furnished accommodation are deterred from asking for a lower rent because they know they will be kicked out if they do, and those who come under the decontrolled setup have no security of tenure. This Rent Act has done a marvellous job of work. It is in such a state of chaos that thousands of people are now homeless.
I put this to the Minister fairly and squarely. The test of any Government is the way it treats the people who are in the greatest need. There are always those who need help more than others. They are the people whom Governments are designed to help. That is what the social services are all about. That is why we are proud of our National Health Service. That is why the National Assistance Board exists, to help people in financial distress.
I know there is always the "spiv" and the type of person who will exploit. In London there is a proportion of such people. There are. no doubt, problem families with whom neither this nor any other Government can deal. But we are not talking about them. We are talking about the ordinary, decent people who, through no fault of their own, have no home of their own. It is impossible to be a London Member and not feel ashamed at some of the cases which come to one's notice. The most appalling case of all is that of the young married couple. Any youngsters who get married today are compelled to live with their in-laws. They cannot get places of their own. My own constituency is packed with them. One cannot blame the in-laws, particularly when children corns along and tempers get frayed. There are heart-rending stories.
The Government must get their priorities right and say, "Housing above all else is the prime social need. In this sense we will deal with the exploiter, the spiv and the speculator. The people will get decent standards of living. We will have a war-time basis of building." That does not need legislation. The Government must get something done for housing on a national scale. They must not throw back at us "We built more houses than you did". That was eleven or twelve years ago, in any case.
This is a human problem which can only be dealt with by Governments. County councils, with all respect to them, can only deal with the position at certain local levels, tinkering about with the problem as best they can. I pay tribute to them for what they have done, but the Government must move in with national funds and resources,

making sure the county councils are able to do this work.
I believe that a property-owning democracy is a great thing. I also believe that the right to have a tenancy in a council house is right, because, at the end of the day, those two things combined will give to our people the sort of Britain to which I at any rate want to belong.

12.10 a.m.

Mr. Richard Marsh: An interesting thing about this debate is that what is happening tonight has happened before. This is an issue on which I should have thought there would be no difference of opinion between the political parties. I suppose that all hon. Members here have their own houses, or at least live in reasonably comfortable accommodation. Yet whenever we have a debate on London housing it has been marked by the failure of London Conservative hon. Members to take part in the discussion. It is tragic that when we are dealing with an issue such as this not a solitary back bencher on the Government side gets up to speak about what is one of the most tragic personal problems we have today.

Mr. Geoffrey Johnson Smith: I am sure the hon. Member does not wish to mislead the House or the wider public who may read what he is saying, which is, explicitly, that no supporter of the Government from a London constituency ever gets up to speak about London's housing problem. That is just not true. I have spoken on a number of occasions about this problem, as have others of my hon. Friends during the three years I have been in this House.

Mr. Marsh: Yes, the hon. Member has taken part in our debates on this matter, but it is an extraordinary thing that every debate which we have on London housing is marked by the lack of speeches from Conservative supporters. It is also a fact that I know of no other subject in which, when the second speaker is called—assuming the debate has been opened from this side of the House—not one Government hon. Member makes a move.
I do not want to press this point too far; I want only to make it at the beginning of my speech.

Brigadier Sir Otho Prior-Palmer: Brigadier Sir Otho Prior-Palmer (Worthing) rose—

Mr. Marsh: I do not know if the hon. and gallant Gentleman is threatening to leave the House, but if so he will leave with nothing but an expression of great appreciation from this side. To return to my point, in no other subject—[Interruption]. I do not know if the hon. and gallant Member for Worthing is sober or why he goes on making those noises. I wish he would not.
I was saying that in no other subject is there what appears to be such a lack of appreciation of just how tragic is this problem. I readily admit that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mr. G. Johnson Smith) does speak on this subject, but there is a much larger number of other hon. Members with London constituencies who sit on that side who do not. Tonight they are not even here, and if the hon. Gentleman speaks I do not think that there will be another hon. Member from London from that side of the House who will take part.

Mr. Graham Page: Before the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) develops this point ad nauseam, I would tell him that I came into the Chamber with notes for a speech. I wanted to hear the discussion develop after the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) had spoken. For the hon. Member for Greenwich to keep on this point is rather ridiculous.

Mr. Marsh: Although the hon. Gentleman speaks for a Liverpool constituency, we Shall be delighted to hear him, but that will not detract from the fact that we should like to hear some other hon. Members from London.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: May I also point out, Mr. Speaker, that not one hon. Member of the Liberal Party has troubled to be here. I think that to be fair my hon. Friend should say that.

Mr. Marsh: That is accepted; the Liberals are very seldom here.

Mr. Douglas Jay: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Would it be out of order to speak about Liverpool housing in this debate?

Mr. Speaker: No more out of order than to speak about London housing. At the moment, what concerns me is that we should get on.

Mr. Marsh: The main point I make is that the position in London is quite exceptional. It arises out of conditions and circumstances which are in many respects peculiar to London. The situation has reached a point where, unless there is some Government intervention on a big scale, the problem will be insoluble no matter how much good will there may be. There must be Governmental intervention and a special review of London's particular problems.
London's problem is typical of what happens if one is not prepared to apply to such a situation long-term planning in detail for one fact which emerges clearly from the report prepared on behalf of the London County Council is that, while the whole pattern of the County of London is changing, there is no clear plan or co-ordination to ensure that it changes in any particular way. One point made in the report is that far too much land is being taken up in London for purposes other than housing, for building offices, factories and roads and even for providing playing fields. All these things are, of course, essential, but we cannot allow land in an area like London to be used for these purposes without taking into account the amount of land which is needed for housing if we are to meet the housing problem which exists. There seems to be no overall plan whatever to cover the future development of London in this way.
One of the examples given in the report is that between 1951 and 1961 the residential population of London fell by 153,000, or about 15,000 people per year. In the same period the working population of London rose by an average of 20,000 people per year. The amount of accommodation available for people to live in London decreases while, at the same time, the pressure increases as a result of the even larger number of people coming into work in the centres of commerce and industry within the capital. All these factors have existed for many years.

Sir K. Joseph: The horn. Gentleman is approaching his subject very analytically, but he is confusing the issue. It is true that the resident population of London fell. It is true that the working population rose. But the number of dwellings in London rose also. The hon. Gentleman is not marrying the three together in his argument.

Mr. Marsh: It is accepted that the number of dwellings has risen. The plain fact is that the number of dwellings, on any count, is in no way keeping pace with the increase in the number of people who are demanding them.

Mr. Graham Page: I do not like to argue with my right hon. Friend or, at this stage, with the hon. Member, but is not the net loss in dwellings, taking into account demolitions and so on, 1,000 per year?

Sir K. Joseph: Sir K. Joseph indicated dissent.

Mr. Marsh: I shall come to that point. I am sure that the Minister will accept that the number of homeless is increasing faster than the rate of building. There are several reasons for this, but one of the main reasons is the change in the use of London and its land. The number of dwellings built to house homeless families and the number built to deal with slum clearance and other issues is a major problem. In 1951, 11·4 per cent. of all the houses built were built for rehousing people from cleared areas and to deal with like problems, and 72·6 per cent. of all properties built were to house people off the housing list. Ten years later, however, the position had almost entirely reversed and in 1961, 72 per cent. of the properties built in London were to rehouse people displaced for some purpose or other and only 14·2 per cent. were to rehouse people on the housing lists.
That enormous switch round is a big factor, because what is never understood by constituents who come to one's advice bureau is that the increase in the number of houses being built is not having any appreciable effect on the number of people corning on to the housing list. It is this factor which makes Government intervention essential, because it is something that no local authority could conceivably cope with in this way.
We hear a great deal about the buying of houses. I am not so sure that I am particularly keen on encouraging owner occupation in an ideal society. It is a wasteful way and has a lot of disadvantages. However, in the present situation we can tell many of the people who come to our advice bureaux, no matter how serious the conditions in which they live, nothing other than that they should try to buy a house. Therefore, the question of house prices in London is an important factor.
It is frequently said that those people have motor cars and television sets and could save and buy a house. That is an understandable view by people who have difficulty in paying their mortgages. The days when owner occupation was reserved for the wealthy passed a long time ago. One can understand the feeling of people living in their own houses, who have difficulty in meeting their mortgage payments, if they tend to be a little intolerant at others who are waiting for or moving into council houses.
Figures issued recently by the Cooperative Permanent Building Society give the conclusion that the average price of an existing house in London was £3,500 and of a new house, £3,700. These figures surprised me. The National Institute's Economic Review, No. 18, of November, 1961, analysed the difficulties of purchasing houses. A £2,250 house costs £256 a year to buy or £192 to rent. The lower income limit required to buy it would be £1,024, and only 12 per cent. of the population are in that income level. Therefore, if only 12 per cent. of the population can afford a £2,250 house and the average price of London properties is between £3,500 and £3,700, it is impossible for the overwhelming majority of Londoners even to consider purchasing a house of their own.
The big factor which emerges from the people in short-stay accommodation in London generally is that they are no longer problem families. They are not the people who are thrown out of houses because they ruin the furniture or are generally difficult to house. What emerges is that they are in short-stay accommodation usually on grounds of income. In 1961, 56 per cent., or over half, of the people in short-stay accommodation were earning less than £11 a


week gross. The number in short stay accommodation earning £12 a week was 74 per cent. Not one of those people could even consider purchasing a property.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) said, the question of rents is equally serious. The L.C.C. conducted a survey of rents and found that in 28 per cent. of all furnished properties rents of between £200 and £299 a year were being charged. It is often overlooked that anyone who is forced into rented accommodation at that sort of rent, because he is paying a rent of £4 to £6 a week is incapable of ever getting out because he is incapable of saving enough to make a deposit on a house.
We are faced with a tragic situation. The Minister and all hon. Members appreciate the difficulties. These are not people who buy big motor cars and spend all their money on drink. That is an old chestnut which, unfortunately, many still believe. These people are earning low incomes. It is frequently forgotten that over 38 per cent. of all the people in the country earn less than £13 a week. They are not capable of buying their own houses and getting out of their present situation.
We now have a new Minister. It is no secret that the last one was not very popular on this side of the House—not the last Minister but the one before him. The last one looked as if he might have all sorts of new ideas but he then vanished from us. We hope that the new Minister will look at the situation in London—with the realisation that this kind of thing cannot go on any longer.
We do not want a speech at the end of the debate telling us how many houses have been built by the Conservative Party as opposed to the Labour Party. [Laughter.] I frankly do not give a damn how many houses the Labour Party built. I am faced with the problem, as is every London hon. Member, of literally hundreds of people at this moment breaking their hearts because their kids are in children's homes, the husbands in furnished rooms and the wives wondering whether they will ever live a normal married life. They have done nothing other than live in London. The husbands do a normal decent job and have

committed no crime, but they live in a situation which would be a disgrace to any under-developed area in the world.
This is in the biggest metropolis in the world. It is shameful. I have a case which underlines this tragedy. A young man of 29 years of age with one small child came to see me recently. Five years ago he became ill with rheumatic fever and he has never properly recovered. He lives in very poor accommodation which is extremely damp and with water trickling down the walls. He has been advised that he has no prospect of recovery from the illness until he can get into decent warm dry accommodation. I wrote to the housing authority as follows:
The above named has recently been to sec me with an exceptional housing problem and in view of its nature I wonder if you and the Committee would be prepared to give it special consideration with a view to taking it out of turn? He is 29 years old and five years ago was taken ill with rheumatic fever. He has never made a real recovery and has been unemployed for the whole of that period. His present accommodation is extremely damp and it is clearly stated by his medical advisers that he has no chance of a real recovery unless he can obtain dry accommodation. He has a 6 year old daughter, and is naturally becoming extremely depressed at the prospect of spending his future as an unemployable cripple.
We all get these cases, but I can think of nothing more damning of the present situation than the fact that I had to tell him, after a lot of people had been troubled about his case, that there was nothing in 1962 that anyone can do for him, that there was no prospect of any accommodation in the foreseeable future. Of course, if the local authority had acceded to my request and allowed him to jump the queue it would have only have pushed someone else on to the list: it would have achieved nothing at all.
There are hundreds of these cases, and the number is growing every week. I hope the Minister will be able to assure us that the Government recognise the urgency of this matter and are prepared to take urgent measures for dealing with it.

12.31 a.m.

Mr. Graham Page: In the early part of his speech the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) raised a point which I hoped he was going to develop further. He said to my right


hon. Friend that if all the homeless in London were housed at once the same problem would be back with us in six months' time.
I have read with some care the report on the London homeless, and I have tried to discover from that—and I may have missed the point—how many dwellings would have to be provided each year to solve the problem of the London homeless. Let us see what is the magnitude of the problem stated as the number of homeless to be housed per year. We find the figures for the homeless at any one time. Last October there were 600-odd homeless families in the care of the London County Council. They are now over 800. But that is only the figure at a specific time. Some of them get houses quite quickly because they may be on housing lists already; some of them do not get houses for 12 months or 15 months. Let us suppose that the hon. Gentleman the Member for Bermondsey was exaggerating a little bit and that there are some 800 families who need houses every 12 months.
In 1956, I think, London County Council set aside some 400 dwellings from its general list—if I may put it that way—and it then reduced the homeless very considerably. I think some of the Part III accommodation at that time was closed down because the allocation of dwellings from the normal list of the county council was providing sufficient homes for the homeless. That was when some 400 homes a year were being allocated specifically to the homeless. Over the past few years the county council has allocated only 50 from its general list. One can scarcely be surprised, in those circumstances, that the homeless numbers have risen, because, obviously, the housing of them has not gone on as quickly as before. I gather that the figure has now been raised from 50 to 75, but surely that is a very small figure to set against the 800 homeless families in the care of the county council at the moment.

Mr. Albert Evans: I hope the hon. Member is not making the suggestion that London County Council is deliberately reducing the number of houses it allocates to the homeless. I am sure he realises that, with the emphasis on slum

clearance, more and more houses built by the county council have to go to those people who come out of the slums.

Mr. Page: I was about to develop that point. I do not say the London County Council is wrong in this. I am just saying that these are the figures, and one can scarcely be surprised that if only that number of houses is allocated from the general list to the homeless the number in Part III accommodation has risen. It may well be that the county council cannot provide more from its general list because, as the hon. Gentleman said, all its housing resources have been devoted to rehousing those displaced by sum clearance. The whole trend of rehousing has changed since 1955.

Mr. Frank Tomney: Even that is not the point. This is the point which the hon. Member is missing. He mentioned the peak year of 1956. In 1957—this is the operative year—we had the Rent Act, as a result of which people were evicted and became homeless. The year to take is not 1956. The London County Council is concerned with 1957 onwards. Surely the hon. Member will agree that any commodity which is in short supply, especially houses in capital cities like London, must of necessity be regulated. There has to be fair distribution. The point that the hon. Member has missed, and which my hon. Friend has missed, is that after 1957 when the Rent Act applied evictions took place, and the county council loss grew and it found that it could get subsidies only in respect of slum clearance. That is where the Government's plan fell down, and that is what they have to change.

Mr. Page: The hon. Member is not quite right with his figures. Homeless numbers did not increase in 1957. They did not increase until early 1960. In fact, they were still dropping between 1957 and 1959 in London. The increase did not result directly from the Rent Act. Whether it occurred indirectly after the three-year tenancies is another matter, but it did not result directly from the Rent Act.
When the hon. Member for Bermondsey suggested a return to some form of control, the point I was trying to make was that the control put on furnished


dwellings had not prevented people in furnished dwellings from becoming homeless and that to apply rent tribunals to unfurnished dwellings, as I understood he was suggesting, did not seem to me to be a solution to the problem at all.
What I am trying to find out is the number of homes which would have to be provided by the county council to meet this homeless problem, and when one has found out that number, how they are to be supplied. At the moment there is a net loss of dwellings in the county of about 1,000 a year. Over the period from 1955 to 1960 the net loss, as stated in the report, was 6,000 dwellings. Therefore, each year we are losing within the county about 1,000 dwellings. If we were not losing them, I imagine there would be no London homeless.

Sir K. Joseph: This part of my hon. Friend's argument is not based on fact. There has been on average a net gain of dwellings within the county, after allowing far slum clearance and demolition, of 12,000 a year between 1951 and 1961.

Mr. Page: I was taking the actual statement in the report. There it states that the net loss over the period from 1955 to 1960 was 6,000.

Mrs. Freda Corbet: That is not correct. It has been corrected. I have the figures for 1961. The total new housing amounts to 10,025 and demolitions 7,600, leaving a net gain of 2,400.

Sir Hugh Linstead: If I may continue the interruption, paragraph 162 of the London County Council's report begins:
The Council's operations during the period 1955–60 resulted in a net loss of 6,000 homes within the county.

Mrs. Corbet: But that is not the London County Council alone. The hon. Member will remember—

Mr. Speaker: Order, order. May I make it quite plain that I deprecate, for sensible reasons I hope, interventions upon interventions.

Mr. Page: I am obliged, Mr. Speaker.
I take the correction. I understand that the figure does not take account of what the boroughs have done. That still leaves the problem of where to find the

houses to house the homeless. I do not think that an increase in Part III accommodation, which the county council has applied for the past few months, will solve it. It is only increasing the problem to house the homeless in such accommodation and not provide them with houses.
I was very impressed with the figures, given by the hon. Member for Bermondsey, of vacant property. He did not develop that argument to say whether it is the type of property which could be adapted or converted into homes for this type of person. I understand that the county council is now purchasing 350 houses a year in order to house the homeless.
If there are so many vacant properties, it may be that an increased number of purchases by the county council would be advisable. I believe I am right in saying that none of these purchases up to now have necessitated compulsory acquisition. I do not think there is need for the hon. Member to be quite so aggressive about this. If the county council desires to purchase houses for this purpose, it looks as if it does not have very much difficulty in doing so.

Mr. G. A. Pargiter: The position has, of course, altered with regard to compulsory purchase. Whereas at one time the L.C.C. was able to purchase a house at what was considered a fair price, compulsory purchase now means that the full market price must be paid. Thus, even if it buys by compulsory purchase, it is liable to be no better off.

Mr. Page: I am glad to think that the market value is paid for these houses, otherwise the county council would have to use compulsory acquisition in order to get them. Now it gets them by private treaty. But I am not sure that the type of property which falls vacant is suitable for providing homes for the homeless. At any rate, it is a short-term policy to buy houses of that sort for such a purpose. It is not satisfactory as a long-term policy.
An alternative policy is, of course, temporary housing, which is very satisfactory. For instance, there are the temporary wooden houses we have on exhibition on the other side of the river and for which, I understand, there are


many sites available in the county. I believe the county council is only asking for about 200 a year of these. As a short-term policy I think that here lies the real solution. The county council should put 2,000 or 3,000 of them on bombed sites at once, where the services are ready to join up, and use them as a short-term measure for two or three years.
The long-term answer is, of course, comprehensive development, not development as it has been up to now, in blocks of flats isolated from shops and commercial property. There are many areas in London and fairly close in Which could be developed by the local authorities in cooperation with private enterprise if real comprehensive development plans ware laid down.
I want to deviate a little from London because the hon. Member for Bermondsey referred to the northern towns and complained that the population was moving from the north to the south and that there ought to be greater planning to keep the population in the north. Of course there ought to be. If we could only provide the industries round the northern towns, we would keep the population there.
I do not want the industries to be put there to attract the population back to the type of house in which people are living in many central Lancashire towns. Let us apply comprehensive development there too. Let us attract the industries to go there and at the same time do the building on a big and imaginative scale—not just a block of flats here and a block of flats there, but take in all the building resources to do the job. Let us take in not only local authority, not only private industry, but Exchequer resources as well, in the same way as we have in the new towns.
I hope that my right hon. Friend will not treat this debate just as one on London. We cannot treat it as that, because although a small proportion of London's homeless have lived here for over ten years, the figures show that the majority of them have not lived in London for that length of time but have come from other parts of the country. If industry attracts them back to the towns from whence they came, we may partially cure the homeless problem in London, but we shall only do so both

by putting the industries in the north and also by having imaginative plans for rebuilding those northern towns.

12.47 a.m.

Mr. Douglas Jay: The hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) seemed to be talking sense when he said that if only we could get more industry into northern towns we might stem this drift of population and ease the problem at both ends. But this did not seem to link up with what he said earlier when he tried to work out some finite figure of extra dwellings which he thought the London local authorities should build and thus solve the whole problem. The problem in London will not be solved while Government policy remains what it is and allows this drift of population to the south-east to continue, because in these circumstances there is no finite figure. If, in three years, the London County Council built 20,000 houses and then ceased building, the problem would undoubtedly re-appear before many months, or a few years, had gone by.
I hope that the Minister is honestly trying to understand this problem and means to do something to solve it, because we have had rather a lot of party speeches in reply to these debates, which rally have not carried things any further. I am glad that the Minister is listening to the debate, unlike the Leader of the Liberal Party who is apparently not interested in housing in London.
I start by tackling this problem from the human angle and quoting one letter which I received from a constituent of mine after this debate began. This constituent is a husband and father who is living with his parents in one room in Battersea, and his wife and three children are living with her father and mother in Aylesbury. These letters are not always very grammatical or literate. He says:
This situation is causing our marriage to break up. We have got three children and another baby expected in September. My mother has not got the room to put them up so I have not got nowhere for them. Please could you help? I am writing to you, Sir, in desperation in order to save my marriage and to have my wife and children with me as I have been living apart like that is now for over 18 months.
It is not very pleasant in these circumstances for us to tell such a man that


there is nothing we can do. This is only one case out of the appalling number which come to our notice every week in interviews and in letters of the kind from which I have just quoted.
What can we say to a constituent in this situation, who is earning £11 or £12 a week and who has not been long enough on the council housing list to have any chance of being rehoused because his council is dealing with slum clearance in the case of most of its new houses? It is absolutely out of the question for him to find any rented property. If one asks him to go to house agents or to read the advertisements he will laugh. The first thing that most landlords would say to him would be, "Three children, and another expected? It is absolutely out of the question". We sometimes read that local authorities do not allow people to keep cats and dogs in their flats, but the situation now is that private landlords do not allow people to keep children.
Am I to advise such a person—as I always try to do if there is the ghost of a chance—to go to the council or to a building society and try to borrow money to buy a house? I have some figures in my possession from the London County Council. Without going into them in detail, they show that for a house worth £3,000 and valued at £2,600 it would be necessary to find £6 a week, and that if it is valued at £3,000 the amount required is about £7 a week. We know that that is completely out of the question for the type of person to whom I am referring.
Are we to ask such an individual to try to get a house in a new town—as I have done on numerous occasions in the last ten or fifteen years? The requirement in this case is that he must get a job there first, and the problem is so difficult as to be almost insuperable. Therefore, I ask the Minister what we are supposed to do in these extremely depressing cases. The fault of such an unfortunate man is that he is earning only £11 or £12 a week. My hon. Friend for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) said, "Thank heaven we have people to sweep the roads and do these unskilled jobs", but I know of two cases where the unfortunate people concerned are

postmen—servants of the Government, whose income is determined by the Government under the pay pause. Under the Government's own incomes policy and housing policy it is impossible for such people with families to live in the capital city.
Has the Minister ever considered the Government's incomes policy, which determines the incomes of people like postmen and policemen, in relation to their rents policy? That is where we start, because it is where we are compelled to start when listening to our constituents. Does the Minister feel that he understands the causes of the situation that we have got into?
Here I link up with the hon. Member for Crosby. Putting it fairly crudely, it comes to this: what is happening, first, is that the population not just of the County of London or even of Greater London, but London and the south-east of England, is now increasing faster than the housing resources available, and faster than the housing resources can be made available if the general Government policy on industry and housing remains as it is. Why is the population increasing in this corner of the country? The answer is quite simple: it is increasing because the volume of employment there is increasing. The volume of employment, geographically speaking, determines the population. I do not think that the Minister would deny that.
Why is the volume of employment increasing at this rate in south-east England and the Greater London area? The answer to that is that the area is getting such a big share of the new commercial as opposed to industrial employment. I do not believe that there is any serious doubt that that is happening. We have no real control, from the geographical point of view in particular, over the development of office employment. So long as that is true, I say to the Minister and his hon. Friend that all the consequences will follow no matter how many temporary homes or houses are provided by the L.C.C. and other London councils. Incidentally, this problem is the same as the problem caused by the depopulation of Scotland and the migration of people from the north-east of England which we discussed in a recent


debate. The fact that people leave those areas gives rise to the housing shortage in London. Does the Minister doubt the fundamental truth of that diagnosis?
There has bean some confusion over the matter because the south-east of England is broken up into smaller and greater areas in connection with the problem It is true that the population of the County of London is falling. But the County of London is only one part of what I would call the area of travelling distance, and that is the economically significant area. It is the population within the area of 45 or 50 miles from the centre of London, within travelling distance, which is increasing, and the number of people who are seeking homes in central London and failing to find them, or in L.C.C. London, is determined by the number of jobs in the whole of the larger area. That is the explanation of what would seem to be the paradox, that there are fewer people in the County of London whereas the demand for houses is ever increasing. Therefore I think it follows inevitably that until we control the increase in the volume of employment in the larger area, we cannot solve this problem.
Looking at the problem superficially, a lot of people consider that the real trouble is that there is not enough land for the local authorities. They mean that unless we give up planning and abandon the green belt schemes and all the rest of it, it is not profitable to house the increasing population. We play a sort of game with the density rules and we try to say that the density shall not be more than so much in a certain area. That determines whether more than a certain number of rooms shall be allowed in an area. We are not determining the number of the population. A certain number of rooms are built and more people come because there is more employment. The number of people per room increases, overcrowding becomes worse and rents increase.
Some figures were given in the debate on the distribution of industry on 26th June. Whichever of those figures is quoted it confirms the general diagnosis. One of the most remarkable is that in Central London alone, an area even smaller than the County of London, the number has been increasing by 15,000 a year over the last 10 years. In the London and South-East Region 80 per

cent. of the new employment being created is not controlled by industrial development certificates at all which means that there is no effective control from the point of view of employment or the distribution of industry.
Another figure which shows what is happening is that in the ten years up 1958 planning permission was given for new office accommodation to provide employment for 300,000 people. The number of jobs in the County of London increased by 200,000 in the ten years between 1951 and 1961.
From 1951 to 1961 there was an increase in what is for this purpose called the conurbation—that is roughly the Greater London area, the inhabited area —of 176,000, whereas there was an increase in the three regions outside the conurbation of 363,000, which means a net increase in the larger area of about 200,000 during those years. That shows conclusively what has been happening.
That being the basic situation, it seems clear that the Rent Act was an incredible piece of folly and has made the situation infinitely worse. If we were living in a country where the pressure of population on housing and the volume of employment were even over the whole country, there might have been some case for a rent act and for the Minister's famous argument that it will all sort itself out. As the rent Act and the decontrol were applied to the extremely congested area into which people were trying to push, a dreadful shortage and soaring land values and rents were inevitably brought about
As is confirmed by all the figures given on creeping decontrol, the Rent Act has enabled the emigration from Liverpool and Scotland, and so on, into London to be speeded up. As long as the vast majority of rented accommodation was controlled and people had security of tenure, it was not at all easy for these houses to be obtained by somebody who wanted to leave Scotland or Liverpool. If people are evicted and houses with vacant possession are thrown on the market, anybody who can raise the money can press into London and push out the evicted people, who are then thrown on to the L.C.C. as homeless families demanding accommodation which does not exist. This is what has been happening.
In these circumstances it was an error to farce decontrol on London. If this is so, there is no argument about why homelessness has occurred over the past few years. It is probably true that the Landlord and Tenant Act, with the three years respite, somewhat postponed the full crescendo of it until after the Rent Act was passed. Now we are beginning to reap the harvest.
If this is so, I put it to the Minister that one of the main causes of this tragic situation is the uncontrolled office building which has been going on which is the main source of all the additional employment. The Coalition Government and the Labour Government at the end of the war made a mistake in not including offices as well as factories in the industrial development certificate procedure. I think that we all made a mistake then. We ought to be capable of amending our mistakes now rather than arguing about who is to blame for originally making them. There ware two mistakes. There are two difficulties to be overcome.
First, we cannot expect a local authority which now has the planning power to refuse permission to build an office in Central London in order to help to cure unemployment in Liverpool. That is not the job of the L.C.C. or the Middlesex County Council. Only a national authority can do that. It is therefore wrong in principle that we should try to control office building through the medium of local authorities, which simply have not the responsibility.
Secondly, as has already been said tonight, I do not think the Minister will deny that the compensation that the London County Council would have to pay under existing legislation—I know that we are not allowed to suggest a change of legislation—if it was reality going to embark on a policy of clamping down on new office building in London would be hopelessly and wildly beyond its present resources. The present position, I understand, is this, and I hope the Minister is a greater expert on this subject toy now than most of us: if planning permission is refused to redevelop office property on a site where there has been office property already and there is no change of use, unless one is prepared to allow the developer

not merely to redevelop but to add 10 per cent. of the cubic capacity, which may mean 50 per cent. more employment, compensation has to be paid at full market value.
If the Board of Trade refuses the Ford Motor Co. at Dagenham an I.D.C. to build a factory of 2 million square feet, nobody asks for compensation; nothing has to be paid and its costs the Government nothing. If the L.C.C. has to refuse permission to Mr. Clore or Mr. Cotton to redevelop office property, provided it is a site where there was office property before, millions may have to be paid. There is no reason why one system should apply in the case of factory building and quite another system in the case of office building.
The result of all this is that while the Board of Trade is, at any rate, doing something to restrain factory building with the idea of preventing congestion in London, all that it is doing is being entirely overwhelmed by the increased office building over which we have no control whatever.

Mr. Graham Page: Is the right hon. Gentleman saying that we now have greater office capacity in London than we had before the war, or have we not reached that point yet?

Mr. Jay: Speaking from memory, I think the total has increased from 80 million square feet to something like 120 million square feet, comparing 1961 with 1938. Even if that were not true— and I am sure it is true—it is obvious that now we ought to call a halt and institute some system of control.
I make these practical suggestions to the Minister, for if he will not do something about it we shall continue to get these oases. First, he must somehow bring office building into either the industrial development certificate system or something similar to it. The Government have produced an argument of principle against this idea. The argument is that whereas a factory is always built for a specific purpose and for a specific person, an office is put up speculatively for any number of people. The answer to the Minister is that that is not altogether true, and even if it were true it is totally irrelevant It is not true, because factories are also built as


advance factories, and not merely by the Government either. Nobody has suggested that a factory cannot be controlled by the I.D.C. system.
Even if it were true, it is just as possible to refuse permission or a licence for a block of offices when it is not known who is going to occupy them as it is when one does know who is going to occupy them. One merely says that it is not considered that another block of offices of that size should be built on Millbank or wherever it is. There is no substance in that argument of the Government's.
Somehow we have got to take this burden of compensation off the local authorities and put it on to the national Exchequer, for there is nowhere else where it can go. I would draw the Minister's attention to one sentence on page 41 of the Report on London Homelessness which we are discussing tonight. The authors of this Report state,
The central Government should, therefore, be pressed to tax property owners and developers profiting from planning restrictions and the acute housing shortage which operates in their favour. The proceeds of the tax should be contributed to the cost of local authority housing in London.
That is one way of raising compensation necessary for this purpose, but if the Minister does not do these more drastic things, then surely the Government should amend the provision by which an extra 10 per cent. of the cubic capacity is allowed to the office developers and, if they do not get it, they are allowed compensation even although the accommodation was not there before.
The Minister has told us that he was seriously thinking about this, but we have heard nothing since this subject was last raised in the House. One precise and concrete question I would ask is what is being done and has the Minister any intention of taking any action at all. If he finds this all too difficult and complicated, and if it involves legislation, there is an easy way out, an easy way of holding the situation until the legislative problem can be sorted out, and that is to apply building licences not only to the congested areas but to the whole of the country. Might he not do that if he really wishes to take this problem seriously?
The next thing is to apply the controls which we already have; the I.D.Cs to the factory building, and at least the planning machinery to restrict office and commercial development where, in fact, there was housing or some other form of residential property before. When we have got control, then of course it will be possible to make an impact on the problem by really stepping up the building of council houses, because when there is some form of control the obvious remedy is a real campaign for building council houses on a scale adequate to meat the needs.
I would make an amendment in so far as the new towns are concerned. It is comparatively seldom that we ever get any really bad housing cases into one of these towns outside London. We should relax the absolute rule which operates at present that somebody has to get a job before he can get a house. The unfortunate individual cannot get a house until he has a job to go to, but he cannot get a job until he has a house in which to live, and there is no way out of the vicious circle. If we allocated some of the accommodation in the new towns for those on the London housing lists and helped the people concerned to get jobs, we should make a greater impact on this problem. How many of the people getting houses in the London area new towns were badly housed before, and how many have come from central London? I suggest that it is not a great number.

The Earl of Dalkeith: Perhaps the new town of Livingstone in West Lothian is an example of how we can bring about the provision of houses with the provision of new jobs. Perhaps this is an example of what could be done all over the British Isles.

Mr. Jay: That may well be so, and the noble Lord will know more about that than I do; but I do not believe that we are at present using effectively the new towns around London as a contribution to the solution of London's housing problem. That is the depressing experience which I have in trying to get some of my constituents into the new towns.
While the emergency continues, we must encourage London local authori-


ties to buy up existing private properties, buying the empty houses which undoubtedly exist in various parts of London. I do not believe that this in itself can go a very long way to meet the problem or get over the gap, but it would do something.
The Government will have to do something to ease house purchase terms. It is quite fantastic to have rates of interest at 6 or 7 per cent. in force when purchase is the only possible means of escape for a great number of people who cannot find houses in any other way. If the Minister is not prepared to do this, he is really abandoning any pretence that he is aiming at any sort of property-owning democracy because, with present interest rates, people earning ordinary wages cannot buy houses at their present market values in London.
If the Minister wants to solve the problem and he wants to be practical, he should abandon the present plan for destroying the London County Council and farming out housing powers to a number of smaller London local authorities. This does not require legislation. It is the Minister's policy which requires legislation. I suggest that there should be no legislation on this matter. Even if the Minister institutes larger control schemes, we cannot achieve anything like success in dealing with the problem unless there is a really powerful London housing authority which can build houses right outside the green belt, which is the only place where there is any land left, and move into those houses people who come from the worst overcrowded areas of Central London. The only approach we have to such an authority at the moment is the London County Council. If we place housing powers wholly or mainly in the hands of smaller authorities, we shall lose some of the chance of success which we have already.

Mr. A. Evans: My right hon. Friend says that the London housing authorities should build right outside the green belt. Will he not agree with the hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) in this matter, that housing and work must go together? Surely, to suggest that London housing authorities should build outside the green belt, without

provision of work and industry in those areas, goes against his own argument.

Mr. Jay: I take that point, of course, but I am thinking of the expanding towns which, as my hon. Friend knows, the London County Council is now building outside the green belt, together with work in the area—I accept that, of course—and I am pointing out that, if we give this up and ask Wandsworth, Battersea, Woolwich or Hampstead to solve their housing problems on their own, there will be no chance of achieving any success. These authorities have not the resources or the land, and they will not be able to do it.
Whatever the Minister may think of the details of this subject or of the suggestions which I have made, he must accept that, unless he acts as drastically and comprehensively as I have shown, he will never solve the problem. If he is not prepared to act in that way, he is not really taking the present situation seriously.

1.19 a.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Johnson Smith(Holborn and St. Pancras, South): I agree in large measure with the diagnosis of the problem propounded by the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay), and I agree with some of the suggestions he advanced, but I must take him up on one or two points. He said—and I know that this was his opinion long before this Report came out about London's homeless—that there has been a tremendous increase in employment in London and the Home Counties. I take the view, as does the right hon. Gentleman, that this is not an unmixed blessing for the economy as a whole.
The right hon. Gentleman thought that the Rent Act had exacerbated the problem of London's homeless by attracting to London people who in normal circumstances would not have been able to come here because, but for the Rent Act, they would have been living in controlled tenancies from which they refused to budge. This is the curious dilemma which we are in. If it was right and proper, as I think it was, that London should develop as a commercial centre and add to the prosperity of the nation, if it was right that London should develop as a port and add to the prosperity of the nation through coping


with increased export orders, and if it was right that the modern industries of the second industrial revolution, which centred in and around London in the 'thirties, should expand to improve our economic prosperity, as is the case with plastics and electronics, for example, would it not have been thoroughly reprehensible if people had not moved from the North, Scotland, the West and elsewhere to these industries which wanted the labour, and got it, and were able to sell their goods in increased abundance abroad? The prosperity of the country would have suffered had these people not moved to an area which was expanding because it was an area in which the new industries had settled.

Mr. Jay: A great number of those new ventures could, of course, have gone to areas where there was housing already. Indeed, in the first years after the wax they did so, and made a great contribution to our prosperity through exports, as a result of pressure from the Government.

Mr. Johnson Smith: I accept the point. The right hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that many of the industries to which I have referred have moved and expanded in Wales and elsewhere. All I am saying is that in the 'thirties it was thought right and proper that the south-eastern area should also take part in the new Industrial Revolution and should contribute to our progress. Efforts to induce industry to move elsewhere have met, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, with a fair measure of success in many areas.
The communications of London and the fact that London is a port has con-tributed to the expansion of the Home Counties area. Although this is desirable, I accept that the trend has gone too far. Therefore, like the right hon. Gentleman, I have come to the conclusion that this is not an unmixed blessing. The operative word, however, is "blessing". One must accept that this has resulted in a considerable addition to the economic prosperity of the country.
In terms of housing, it poses special problems of the kind which we are discussing tonight, on which I should like

to make some positive suggestions. It poses the problem, which all nations facing the second Industrial Revolution must cope with, of how to combine stability with progress. It would be possible to plan the country out of existence. The alternative is complete laissez-faire. I do not know of any country which is attempting to allow new industries to grow and to increase the prosperity of those areas, which does not in the course of that development have to face a number of new social problems or find that existing social problems and housing are exacerbated in the course of the change from one industry to another.

Mr. A. Fenner Brockway: If the hon. Member is correct in saying that there has been great extension in the South-East and that it has been important for our export trade and our economy, does it not follow that any Government should simultaneously provide houses for the workers coming into the expanding areas? Is not that the difficulty of London? Is is not the difficulty of Slough?

Mr. Johnson Smith: I accept what the hon. Member says. That is why I admit fully that this is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, the nation has gained through the economic prosperity of the London and Home Counties area by this expansion. On the other hand, I can see that we have lost from the sociological point of view and it has added to and exacerbated the problem of housing in this part of England.

Mr. Marsh: I am trying to follow the argument of the hon. Member. There appears to be a suggestion that the mere fact that there is an over-concentration of industry in London of itself makes some contribution to the national economy. I cannot understand why if industry were better planned and distributed it would not make the same, if not a better, contribution in that there would not be a short supply of labour.

Mr. Johnson Smith: If I followed the point of view of the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) to its logical conclusion, it would mean that industries must go where, from a housing point of view, it would contribute to the happiness of the nation. It would make some


contribution in that way, but I am suggesting that there will be good reasons from the economic and industrial point of view for saying that where particular industries should be in the national interest may not always be best from the housing point of view. One has to try to get this matter in balance. There is a limit to which one can go in inducing or forcing industry to keep to certain areas where there happens to be no housing problem. That is one of the criteria we have to take into account.

Mr. G. W. Reynolds: Does the hon. Member think we have reached (that point yet?

Mr. Johnson Smith: I agree that there is an over-concentration of employment in the London and Home Counties area, and it is not an unmixed blessing.
The right hon. Member fox Battersea, North made reference to offices. As he knows, my constituency contains a great many offices. I accept his view that in this respect there has been an over-concentration of offices in the central London area, but he suggested that the system of I.D.Cs. might apply to offices. I am not sure that I would go along with him in that. That would seem to shut out of the London area somewhat arbitrarily those firms which it might be in the national interest to have in the central part of London. If we have to have some sort of control and at the same allow some individual freedom, more fiscal measures might be employed to better effect.

Mr. Jay: The hon. Member surely does not think that I.D.Cs. stop factories being built or sometimes being extended?

Mr. Johnson Smith: If a factory is to be over 5,000 square feet it is better that it should go elsewhere, but if it were arbitrarily decided that such-and-such an office block should not go up we might prevent a firm having offices in London when it would be desirable from a national point of view for that to happen. I am suggesting that if we are to have some system of control and to encourage decentralisation from London without denying completely some individual freedom of choice, a system of tax such as is employed by the French Government with a zoning system with the higher the tax the nearer to the

centre of the city might be the best way of accomplishing the sort of thing which the right hon. Member and I have in mind.
My remarks really fall into two parts. May I just make a short comment on what I regard as the short-run problem of London's homeless families? I think the report commissioned by the L.C.C. makes it quite clear that this is something not caused by the Rent Act, as some people last year suggested it was, and that the fundamental causes in the long term are derived from the economic growth of London and the Home Counties area. It pointed out—and I would agree—that a supply of privately rented accommodation is declining and the reason fox that—I think fairly given —is local authorities' own redevelopment schemes and slum clearance activities. In addition I would add—and I think the Report also makes mention of the fact—that the proportion of low-wage earners in London is declining and in certain areas, which hitherto have provided a stock of low-rented accommodation for the low-wage earners, it is disappearing from the market as the higher paid professional and clerical workers tend to rediscover and move into parts of London which were considered not particularly fashionable, and also because of their jobs. All this, I would have thought, accounts basically for the difficulties which face many of the families who find themselves homeless.
I would have thought the proportion of people who are homeless in London, some 800 families, is not so great that in the short term the L.C.C. could not deal with it without any form of subvention from the Government. My surprise is that the L.C.C. woke up so late to this problem. After all, I remember when, not so many years ago, the Rent Act was passed, we were solemnly assured by the members of the county council that there would be some 3,000 homeless families. Here the council some years after the passing of the Act is falling down on the job with nowhere near 3,000 homeless families. It seems to me that the council have the resources, and it certainly had the powers, to buy up or negotiate acquisition of vacant property. I am glad to note that this is what the council has been doing in recent months. My criticism of its policy is that it has done this too slowly.
It is interesting to note, too, that though there is a shortage of building sites in. London there is a sufficient number of the small sites on which to put mobile homes. Here again I think the county council has been dilatory—in providing mobile homes on those sites. It has made a start, and this is encouraging news, but none of these things had to be left to the Government to deal with. I should have thought the L.C.C. perfectly capable of dealing with them.
In the long term I would accept straight away that the Government themselves have most tremendous responsibility, first, in steering the increase in jobs in London and the Home Counties to the North and West, and secondly, in encouraging the development of the twilight areas of London. This is the tackling of the job from both ends, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred: inducement to industry to move to the North, inducements for offices particularly to move out of London: and, at the same time, making proper use of the land which is available for redevelopment in London.
I feel that this can be done by partnership between local authorities and private industry. Local authorities can buy land by compulsory purchase order, but they rarely command the necessary skills for large-scale development and can rarely risk the capital expenditure involved because they have to balance their accounts on an annual basis, and when a local authority wants to develop land, there is often a lean period between purchase of the land and its redevelopment. On the other hand, when we look at some of the large private agencies we appreciate that there is no shortage of skill there, and there is certainly no shortage of money. But they lack compulsory purchase powers. Surely this leads one to believe that there could be a happy marriage between these two organisations.
There is also a third organisation which I do not think we have sufficiently explored, though a beginning has been made. I refer to the housing association movement. Housing associations can apply for compulsory purchase orders, they qualify for subsidies in the same way as local authorities do, and they can

borrow from private groups as well as from local authorities.
In this connection, it is interesting to note that the Minister's predecessor has put his name to a most inspiring document entitled "Town centres: an approach to renewal", and has suggested to local authorities that they should seek out private developers and attempt to work out with them comprehensive schemes for redevelopment along these lines. It is suggested that the local authority should define an area as one for comprehensive redevelopment and encourage co-operation by private developers, and the private developers should buy such land as they are able to by agreement, and where they run into difficulties they should enlist the aid of the local authority for the purpose of compulsory purchase. Having obtained the area in this way, the private company, it is suggested by the bulletin, could transfer the freehold of the land to the local authority, which would grant a long lease in return.
This seems to mark a very important step forward in the thinking of the Ministry of Housing. These ideas have been foreshadowed by the Civic Trust and many of my hon. Friends. I hope that when my right hon Friend replies he will give us an assurance that his mind is working along these lines and that the thoughts contained in the Ministry bulletin have his wholehearted support.
I would suggest something which goes a little further than the bulletin. There are depressed and rather shabby areas in some northern towns which the local authority cannot develop and where private enterprise is not attracted. One wonders to what extent one might consider the setting up of a kind of development corporation on a more regional basis.
I have two points to raise in passing. In regard to comprehensive development schemes for twilight areas of London, I hope that schemes which are put forward to the Ministry will take into account that the densities are remarkably low. I know that much can be said about local authorities asking County Hall and the Ministry to agree to much higher densities in the London area, but it seems to me that in some areas the


densities are extremely low. In London some 35,000 acres are devoted to housing and the average density is 85 persons per acre. What a difference an extra two per acre would make in accommodating households! Obviously, one could not expect an extra two per acre over the whole area, but there are certain parts of Lewisham which have 50 people per acre, which gives the impression of thinking still in village terms.
The question of interest rates has been raised. I accept that on occasion they need to be high and flexible if we are to run an international currency like the £ sterling. But I note that, when it comes to encouraging people to export, it has not been beyond the wit of the Government, through the Export Credits Guarantee Department and the recent scheme with the banks and insurance companies, to help firms to obtain low cost fixed interest loans for exporting.
Why should there not be a similar scheme for big projects of redevelopment, particularly in the North? This might act as an inducement to the quick redevelopment of such areas and this in turn would be likely to encourage industry to go there. It may be that such projects need the pump priming which low interest loans could give.

1.40 a.m.

Mr. G. A. Pargiter: The tendency tonight is to think largely in terms of the County of London whereas this problem of the homeless family goes far beyond its boundaries. I have been interested to hear the academic approach of Members opposite. It is an approach we often hear from them towards these human problems.
They talk of such things as housing associations, but that is not much good to a homeless family, which has not the chance to join such an association, nor indeed has the roots which would encourage it to do so. This shows how far divorced Members opposite are from this problem.
The suggestion is also that this commercial movement to London should be allowed to go on, but one thing we have not heard is about how, when there is new housing development to go with it, we have also to develop new services such as schools and sewerage. Yet these

things exist already in towns in the North which are being denuded because the Government have no national outlook or plan.
We see areas with perfectly good services being denuded while we have to develop new services in other areas. There is no sense in it. It is carrying the doctrine of free enterprise to a completely illogical and silly conclusion. It is time we considered what we are doing with our existing resources.
The idea has been put forward by Members opposite that local authorities could encourage private developers by helping them out with compulsory purchase orders. The alternative we favour is rather more proper. It is that a local authority should acquire the whole of the area concerned and put re-development out to competitive tender so that it might get some of its money back for the public purse.
That is the proper way to do it, and that is the proper form of development if it is proposed to use private industry to carry it out. There must be no question of the local authorities being used to acquire, by compulsory purchase if necessary, property which is then to be developed by a private developer. Very often a local authority gets no return for the difficult work which it is required to do. Any development which takes place should be for the benefit of the community as a whole. If a private developer contributes to the development he should be paid for his work, but he should not get all the sweets. I hope that we shall not hear too much about the idea of partnership agreements which merely require local authorities to help private developers over their difficulties in acquiring areas for development.

Mr. G. Johnson Smith: I assume that the hon. Gentleman was commenting on a suggestion that I made. I should like to disabuse his mind of the fact that that was my suggestion. If he reads my speech in HANSARD he will see that I suggested that the freehold should pass to the local authority concerned.

Mr. Pargiter: I thought that the hon. Gentleman was extolling the idea that where necessary local authorities should come to the rescue of private developers, by compulsory purchase if necessary. That is what the hon. Gentleman said,


but I accept that he did not mean that, and perhaps he will come across to the ideas that I have propounded.
In connection with the problem of homeless families in the Greater London area, I have taken the trouble to extract some figures for Middlesex where the difference is not one of degree, but one of total quantity, comparable in many respects with that of London's problem. It has been a source of great concern to my county council for many years. We have not the advantages of London. We are not a housing authority, and therefore once we get these homeless families we have great difficulty in moving them on, and in this respect we are probably one of the most hard pressed county councils in the country.
The problem of homeless families is largely a housing problem, because few of them are welfare cases. The majority are genuine homeless families and are really the concern of the housing authorities. In Middlesex these are the borough and district councils, and they cannot deal with the problem they come to us as the welfare authority for help. But we cannot help, and in fact have to ask them to take some families off our hands, and so the position gets steadily worse.
I am wondering what will happen when Middlesex is abolished and the various properties that we have for homeless families are transferred to the various boroughs. From a list that I have, I see that families are housed in Ilseworth, Ruislip, Finchley, Ealing, Edgware and Wembley, and that there are hostels for women and children only in Isleworth, Dartmouth Road, and Harlesden. In addition we have a few other properties which are being used, but they do not account for very much. How will these be sorted out amongst the various new boroughs which will have to deal with this problem of the homeless? Every local authority, if it does its job properly, could use all this accommodation and a lot more, and I wonder how far there will be any question of sharing betwen one authority and another. That shows that it is not just a question of saying that these properties go into the new boroughs where they are situated. Not only in this respect but in many others that will create many problems. 
The human aspect of the matter is brought home to me very frequently in my constituency. At my "surgeries", although I gat a few pension and other cases, the vast majority concern housing. I have to tell people that there is nothing I can do. I write to the council and get a stereotyped reply, saying that it has a housing list of so many people, and even though the person concerned may be on the priority list the council can give no promise when it can rehouse the family concerned.
Only a day or two ago a woman came to see me in a very worried state. Her family is homeless, through no fault of its own. The two young children have had to be taken into the care of the county council. We have no places in Middlesex, and have had to put them into a home in Deal, in Kent. The woman is worried because her children are growing away from her. The baby is reaching the stage of not knowing the mother, and the older one is becoming disinterested in the parents. Although, individually, hon. Members opposite may be affected by this type of case they are not worried collectively, in spite of their claim to be upholders of family life. Their Rent Act has done a sight more to destroy it than any other Act passed in this century or the last. We might as well be clear about the way in which this situation has developed.
In Middlesex at present the numbers of these homeless families are constantly rising. In our hostels we now have a total of 134 families, consisting of 93 men, 134 women and 426 children. The problem of children constantly arises, and it always will, because these are essentially young families with children, who get turned out of furnished accommodation and cannot find any alternative. The numbers are continuing to increase. We have 160 families, some of whom we have got into so-called voluntary homes and other such places, under an arrangement where we pay for the cost of these families. No less than 502 children are involved.
There are various schemes in which the county council tries to co-operate with the district councils in finding accommodation. We have been to the county district councils and, after a great deal of pressure and pleading, we have


succeeded in persuading the majority to agree to take one homeless family each, in each year, from Middlesex. There are 26 districts, so that with a little luck we might get 26 families a year housed out of the total that we are getting constantly applying to us. It is not a large contribution that we are able to make in this way.
It is interesting to note the number of people being turned out of their houses without court orders. Taking six-monthly periods, in the last half of 1960 the number evicted by court order for arrears of rent was 26; in the same period in 1961 the figure was 25, and for the first half of 1962 it was 22. The number is not increasing. The next largest number relate to cases where the landlords required possession of furnished or unfurnished accommodation. In the first period there were 17 cases, in the second 27 and in the third 14. There is not a vast increase in cases where court orders are involved.
But when we turn to cases of arrears of rent where court orders are not involved we find there has been a rise from 14 to 30. That rise may be accounted for partly by the fact that there has been some stagnation of the economy and depression in the last period. In the cases where the landlords required possession of furnished or unfurnished accommodation, the numbers were 133 in the first period. 162 in the second, and 156 in the third. This means that the total number we have had over the three periods of six months are 411, 523 and 557 respectively. In other words, there is a progressive increase. This is what is creating the big problem, and one cannot see an end to it.
How have we been able to deal with this? Taking the last six months ending on 30th June of this year, we admitted 53 to welfare establishments; 7 to voluntary homes; 54 children only admitted to voluntary homes; 2 to mother and baby homes: 6 to other local authority hostels. This makes a total of 68 family units and 54 children admitted to voluntary homes when no other accommodation could be found. Of those not chargeable to the welfare committee. 17 went to voluntary homes; 5 to mother and baby homes and only

13 refused the accommodation offered. Heaven knows, it is pretty poor accommodation that is offered, but only 13 refused it. In only six months the county council was unable to find accommodation for 213 families. In six months 143 children were taken into care by the children's officer. In these cases the parents had been told that they would have to fend for themselves because nothing could be done for them. If they had to sleep rough, that was too bad, but the authority saw that there was a roof over the heads of the children. There were 241 cases where no further action was required. They were people who had come along to see what was the position and gone away again and heaven knows what has become of them. So in that period there were 577 family units dealt with and 197 children taken into care separately.
I have an additional note relating to children and the alarming growth in the total of those taken into care. For the six months ending 30th June, 132 children where received into care and for the corresponding period in 1961 the total was 81. The children's officer reported that the number of children taken into care owing to homelessness was putting a big strain on other sections of the services offered by the county council. The breaking up of families is one of the most serious aspects of the problem. Troubles and difficulties arise where there are two families in one house. Nothing will cause trouble more quickly than two women having to use the same gas stove and kitchen sink. Perhaps a married daughter had been allowed to live with her parents because of lack of accommodation and this often results in friction and strain. Sometimes the children are split up, one with one family and one with another. There are not isolated cases. There are vast numbers of them. There seems to be no solution. Unless the Government can indicate some new approach, I do not know what the answer is.
We were told that the 1957 Act would bring about a turnover of properties. The turnover has happened in this way. What were called the middle class families are moving downwards in accommodation because of the higher rents


being charged. Others, who might formerly have been able to afford a house, are moving a little lower still into rooms. Others are moving into hostels provided by local authorities. It is a process of change, but is a constantly deteriorating process due to the operation of the Rent Act and the high rents being charged for all kinds of accommodation. From the middle class downwards, everyone is feeling the squeeze.
A family came to me the other day. The children are in a home. The husband and wife are working like blazes to save money. They cannot afford the deposit on a house, because the husband's income would not qualify him for a mortgage. They are doing their best to find the money to be able to afford one of these extortionate places where £200 or £300 is required for so-called fixtures and fittings. It is not that they think that this is the proper solution. This is the only way they can see of getting the family together again. These people deserve a better fate than that which is being meted out to them.
Almost everywhere in the Greater London Area if the local authority were to enforce its statutory duties with regard to overcrowding there would be riots in every borough in London. The local authorities dare not enforce the law at present.

Sir K. Joseph: Sir K. Joseph indicated assent.

Mr. Pargiter: The Minister admits it. What are the Government going to do about it? They have some responsibility to see that the laws they make are obeyed, even by local authorities. If local authorities defaulted on the question of their loan charges the Government would step in vary quickly. Why not step in now to do something about overcrowding?
In my constituency this is aggravated by the fact there is a 9 per cent. or 10 per cent. coloured population, due to the influx of coloured workers because of the nature of the work provided in the area. God knows what the overcrowding position is there. Nobody is able to ascertain it. I have complaints about overcrowding. I have asked the local authority to investigate them. The local authority says, "As far as we can see, the house may not be overcrowded." The council just does not know. In an ordinary house the number of beds can

be counted. In these places the number of beds cannot be counted, because some of the occupants sleep on the floor and roll their blankets up. It is difficult to find out how many people are living in these places. Local authorities are powerless in these cases to deal with the overcrowding.
This creates racial problems, with a coloured family and a white family living next door to each other. The interruptions and the differences in social standards are creating a very grave difficulty in constituencies like mine where these people are living cheek by jowl.
The problem could be solved if the Government would take steps to provide houses for coloured workers who have been invited to come here. In many cases they have been encouraged to come by employers who have needed their labour. The social problem which is being created should be faced squarely by the Government. It is more than the local authorities can be expected to deal with.
These are the problems as I see them. What of the solutions? If we can begin to depopulate the Greater London area, it may be helpful. The last families to go are the people who are in the worst position at present. They are the sort of people who are in the welfare establishments because they have not got the same freedom of movement. First, they are very often without furniture and without means. In the majority of cases they are unskilled. It is no good recommending them to go to new towns because the new towns will not take them unless they have a skill. The chances are that the new towns will not promise them houses; they have got to reside in the area six months or more. Therefore, they have to keep two homes going for six months, which is an impossibility.
The suggestion has been made that we can do with a greater density. But the Ministry proposals are for greater density where the density is already great. I do not find any urge to increase the density in places like Hendon and Harrow and the outer areas of Middlesex where densities are very low. One does not find any desire to increase the density in "Millionaires' Row" in Hampstead. In any case, one would be told that the cost of the property is


such that there would be no point in increasing the density there.
If there is to be an increase of density, let us have it all round, in places where there are houses with very few occupants and where we could well afford to have an increased density. I should like to see a Minister who has enough courage to authorise local authorities to requisition part of some of these large houses and to put one or two families in. It might bring home to these areas the problem with which we have to deal. If the burden were spread, there would be a smaller burden for us all to bear.
I have spoken up particularly on behalf of Middlesex. We have the problem but we have not the powers of a housing authority to deal with it. We can only plead with the local housing authorities to take the people off our hands—

Commander J. S. Kerans: May I ask the hon. Member a question about this problem of immigrants? Would he not agree that they have been exploited by their own people and that this is one of the problems which we are facing in the London area? I live in the London area, and it is a very difficult problem.

Mr. Pargiter: I am not sure that I understood the question entirely. Exploitation is an aspect of the problem, but exploitation is a general question. We have exploitation by the big property-owning landlords—an example which is followed by people lower down the scale. I am not saying that exploitation does not take place.
We have been talking about the problem of absence of control over furnished or unfurnished accommodation which is decontrolled, and while in many cases the landlords are glad to provide accommodation to couples, as soon as they get children the landlords say "Out you go." It is a form of exploitation, quite apart from rent. It is an exploitation and a punishment because a couple have the temerity to have children. I am not arguing that the question of exploitation is applicable to any particular class. I would say that it is pretty general.
The answer is that if we have a Government who believe in the law of supply and demand and who accept as a

general basic principle in their philosophy that the law of supply and demand must work, they believe that the principle of exploitation must work as well. The Government must realise that the law of supply and demand cannot work in relation to housing. I am sorry that I made that additional point in response to the intervention from the benches opposite, but certainly this is a problem which we have in mind. If I have not developed it fully, it is not because I was not aware of it. It was because the matter had already been dealt with by other speakers.
I hope that, apart from considering legislation, the Minister will have some concrete proposals to make for the Greater London area. I hope, too, that he will not consider the matter merely in terms of numbers, for every one of these cases represents a separate, individual and tragic problem which is the responsibility of the nation as a whole. The nation works through the Government, and it is the Government to whom we look for taking the lead.

2.10 a.m.

Mr. Geoffrey Wilson: Earlier in this debate the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Marsh) taunted us on this side because, he said, those of us who spoke were not representatives of London divisions, but I am sure that you, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, and other hon. Members who do not represent London divisions may well have connections with London. I represent a Cornish constituency and have lived in the West Country, but for the last thirty years my name has appeared in the Law List as a solicitor with a London address and for the last twenty years I have had a London address which entitles me to a London local government vote.
My reason for speaking tonight is that my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page) raised a point which was linked to something said by the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) about comprehensive development. The right hon. Gentleman was very apprehensive as to what would be the effect of office development on the provision of housing in London, and mentioned property developers. One of the biggest owners of ground in London which is not fully developed is British Railways. British Railways own a very


large area which has not been properly developed because the law was that the railways could own land and sell it if that was the desire but that this land could not be developed except for what were known as railway purposes. So, even in the case of the most valuable sites—some of them of grass, right in the middle of London—nothing was done. I can remember about eleven acres behind Earl's Court which had not been used for years because it was thought that the railways might need it some day.
There are large areas not being used, although in recent legislation we have given British Railways—or the Railways Board as it will be called in the future— power to develop that land and let it out for what might be called non-railway purposes; but the development, I am told, is taking place very slowly. That is because the only way to deal with it would be by comprehensive development, in which there would have to be a considerable amount of office accommodation in order that it could be a paying proposition. Because there is opposition in some quarters to more office building the whole scheme is hanging fire. Comprehensive schemes intended to include flats as well as office accommodation are not being proceeded with, and this is having an adverse effect on one effort to provide housing accommodation for London. Some of these sites, if comprehensively developed, would be very helpful.
It is not the drift into other areas, to which the hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) referred, making people pay exorbitant prices for small houses intended to be workers' houses, and developing them for other living accommodation.

Mr. Mellish: With respect, I did not say that. I said that when property became available the owners held on to it instead of letting it to ordinary people who were on the waiting list or in need in order that they could gain vacant possession. Once a man has vacant possession of a house he can get a very lucrative figure for it, as the hon. Member will agree. Today, a £2,000 house will sell for, perhaps, £4,000 or £5,000, with vacant possession. I did not say that there was a change of use.

Mr. Wilson: There are areas south of the river where quite a lot of money is being spent on houses which, after they have been done up—and very nicely done up, some of them—are sold for three, four or five times their previous price. The developer is entitled to do that. He has spent money on the houses, and they are very nice places.

Mr. Mellish: But will not the hon. Gentleman agree that, in times of scarcity like this, even though the developers do all that work, there comes a point when they ought to take into account people's needs, not the amount of money they have in their pockets? Does he suggest that the private property owner has no responsibility in the matter at all?

Mr. Wilson: The hon. Gentleman has misunderstood my point. I am saying that there is a shortage because of the development of London. There is a shortage not only in what used to be the workers' areas, but there is a shortage in other areas, too. If the railway lands of which I have been speaking were developed comprehensively with flats and offices, there would not be the overspill from the north of the river to the south —that is what I am particularly thinking of—which does, perhaps, mean that there is less accommodation there than on the other Slide. I am very glad to live on the south side of the river, but it is the fact that there is quite a lot of development going on such as I have described. At the same time, there is spare land which has been wasted all around our big railway stations, and this land could and should be developed. I hope that the Minister will look into this and ensure that any impediments to its speedy and proper development are overcome.

2.18 a.m.

Mrs. Freda Corbet: I am very grateful for what has been said tonight by various speakers, and I particularly commend to the Minister the views expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay). My right hon. Friend devoted his attention principally to the long-term situation. I hope that the Minister will not rush into giving an answer tonight. I would much rather wait a little so that we have an answer which is not just "No". I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will take very seriously the


problem which exists not only in London but, as we have heard, in Middlesex to a growing extent. He will know also from the Report of the London County Council's Committee of Inquiry that Birmingham, too, has a problem which is probably commensurate with London's.
The facts support the thesis of the Committee of Inquiry that homelessness is one of the things which prosperity— the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras. South (Mr. G. Johnson Smith) was quite right to call it a mixed blessing—brings in its train. Similar problems are to be found in flourishing cities in other parts of the world. A measure of homelessness seems to accompany growing prosperity. It is for this House to try to determine that this miserable, grievous state of affairs shall not persist.
What we sometimes forget is that the actual numbers of homeless are what is showing on the top of an iceberg, which is about one-tenth. Given any great encouragement, the potential homeless would easily be nine times as great. London Members of Parliament, like Members from other places, know that hovering on the brink of homelessness are many thousands of people, the kind of people described by my hon. Friend the Member for Southall (Mr. Pargiter), families living in restricted accommodation with their parents, for example, both in private and, to a large extent, in council property. That is one of the things that any administration has to take into account. A housing authority cannot give to all and sundry the impression that all one has to do is to render oneself homeless to get a dwelling which one has not been able to have before.
From the Minister's meeting with the London County Council on Friday, we gathered that he agrees that the possibility of queue jumping must be reduced to the minimum. It was agreed that what had to be done was to increase the supply of available housing so that it should be possible to meet the demand. The Minister was anxious to ascertain whether the London County Council was building to capacity. The council has undertaken to have an inquiry with the Ministry's officials so that the Minis-

ter may be satisfied that that is the case. The L.C.C. for its part will be glad to receive from the Minister any help whatever in speeding up its programme.
The House will be delighted to know that the London County Council is on the way to introducing the Danish standardised type of dwelling, which, I gather, can be erected at an amazing rate. I do not know what that rate is, but one has a picture of dwellings being put up rather as easily as skittles which have been knocked over are stood up again. The council is doing as much as it can and it will be pleased to have as much support from the Minister as possible.
What, perhaps, the Minister does not appreciate is that although the London County Council is a wealthy body and is prepared to spend, not lavishly, but generously, upon its services, its services are many and wide. On town planning alone, to remove, say, factories and workshops situated among residential properties, while the council spends £½ million a year for this purpose, it could very well spend at least £10 million to meet the needs. It has to cut its coat according to its cloth. Wealthy as it is, it is not possible for any authority to spend regardless of any particular problem which confronts it.
The Minister was extremely interested in the council's purchase of vacant properties, especially to rehouse homeless families. Hon. Members have mentioned that tonight. I think he was rather incredulous when our officials assured him that the number we were purchasing at the moment with a selling price of £3,500 was as many as it would be possible to purchase. The House will appreciate that if the selling price was raised to £4,500 there would be a good many houses available, but then we come up against the problem of whether we should purchase for families which have been rendered homeless the type of property for which one pays £4,500 and realise that thousands on the waiting list living in congested conditions for many years have to watch that being done? That is a problem which any body such as the county council is up against.
I will tell the Minister what has happened in regard to purchase of property


in my borough of Camberwell. London County Council does not by any means take the whole of this problem on to its own shoulders. Although the twenty-eight metropolitan boroughs do not actually provide welfare accommodation for homeless families, they do a yeoman task in preventing families from becoming homeless. The Minister knows of the compulsory purchase orders which borough councils have asked permission to impose. Camberwell has been extremely busy buying empty property to prevent people being evicted. In the most salubrious part of Camberwell, Dulwich College Estates has vast territories. I am told that it will not sell its properties.
I hope that the Minister will take note of this. I think that he should try to get the co-operation of bodies such as the Dulwich College Estates, which is something like the railway authority in wanting to develop what it has in order to make it pay and get greater income for its work. One understands that. Nevertheless, there is a happy medium. There should be some co-operation between bodies of that kind and councils in trying to deal with these problems. Dulwich College Estates is busy developing and building houses of the £15,000 type. They will not be houses which any working people can buy, nor which I imagine middle class people. I hope the Minister will see Camberwell Council on this matter, which it has been pressing for a long time.

Mr. Marsh: My hon. Friend is raising a big question. In Greenwich a Government Department has evicted six families from a building of flats in order to turn it into a fish restaurant.

Mrs. Corbet: My hon. Friend gives interesting information and, talking of that kind of thing, I think London Hospital was responsible for something similar, tenants being evicted in order that the hospital could develop, and an appeal to the regional board produced no results. I saw a letter in the Evening Standard about it a short time ago, but I have not got the cutting with me.
Camberwell had the problem of threatened evictions in one road and the council bought eight houses from which people were being evicted and it made

them available. The council not only lost money but lost four housing units. Now in the same road three more notices to quit are being served. This is what it costs Camberwell—£2,500 to buy a house, plus £2,000 to convert it. It puts tenants in at a rent of two-thirds the gross value, and adding the improvement grant the annual loss per year on each family is from £90 to £120. Plus, of course, the housing loss.
Camberwell Council tells me it may have to discontinue this operation, which is very helpful in preventing homeless-ness and which lessens the burden on the county council, unless it gets something in the nature of the Section 11 grant which was given in respect of derequisitioned houses, and that was 75 per cent. of the loss. The Minister will be aware that the A.M.C. is to see him on this very point of the increase in the improvement grant.
Here is another problem. The borough council is known to be willing to acquire these houses and the owners of really bad property are now threatening their tenants with eviction because they know they can sell the property at the district valuer's price, which is vacant possession price; but those houses are tenanted. This is the problem we have all got to face, when it is known that county councils and borough councils will buy any property. I beg the Minister to realise that there are difficulties in this matter.
Incidentally, Camberwell housing list is 4,400—in Camberwell alone; and that is only one of the 28 Metropolitan boroughs. There are 8,000 Council properties in the area now. I am very glad to know that the Minister does accept the serious nature of this problem and that he does realise that there are about 60,000 applicants in extreme need on the London County Council's waiting list, and that the number when the county council can rehouse from that list in about three years, after all provision has been made for slum clearance, school building, road widening, and open spaces, is about 5,000. All London Members of the House are only too well aware of this.
What I feel is that even if we treble the present output, if we do not set some limit to the magnetism of London the housing problem will go on increasing.


I recognise the argument of the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South about the prosperity of London, and none of us would have been without that prosperity, but the time has come to realise that the housing problem, with the prosperity, is like the road problem: the more we widen the roads to take the oars, the more oars there are. We must stop the magnetism of the prosperity of London. We must try to devise some methods. I do not know what the methods are. It is for the Ministry to determine them. But some must be devised, if the problem is not to go on increasing. I am sorry to inform the House that homeless families are increasing by 10 every week in London. Where we snail be at the end of the year one is not sure.

Mr. A. Evans: My horn. Friend has given us the alarming news that the number of homeless families in London is increasing by 10 a week. Does it mean 10 additional homeless families coming to the London County Council each week or that the number of homeless families being dealt with by the welfare department is increasing by 10 a week?

Mrs. Corbet: It is the latter. After some have been rehoused, the balance is increased by 10 every week. That is a great grief to the council. Many of its members are women, and they are concerned deeply with this problem, for they appreciate the sufferings of the women and families. We had hoped that we should no longer have to segregate men from their wives and children, but the council has had to return to that practice. We now have about 180 families which are segregated. We are also having to reopen some of the old welfare accommodation which we had hoped would never be needed again.
All the symptoms at the moment, particularly the figures given by my hon. Friend the Member for Southall, point to the fact that the problem is increasing. There are many causes, and one of them was the Rent Act, 1957, accompanied by what is termed creeping decontrol, with statutory tenancies beginning in 1914 coming to an end. These things have come about at the same time.
We are very grateful for the committee of inquiry, which has been able to tell

us more definitely what most of us suspected. We hoped it would not be so. We desperately wished that it need not be so. But our worst fears have been confirmed, and I am sure that the House and the Minister are determined to do their utmost to deal with the problem.

2.38 a.m.

Mr. Compton Carr: The hon. Member for Southall (Mr. Pargiter) said that over here we were getting a little high level about this very personal and human problem. I am afraid that I am not able to reach such high levels. I am not an expert on housing, but I see as much of it as any other London Member at the ordinary personal individual level.
One of the things my constituents ask me at the moment is why a home is knocked down in order to make possible not only office construction but also the building of light industrial premises. A notice in one of the more prominent roads in my constituency states that it has been zoned for light industrial premises by the London County Council, and a number of my constituents are asking me why homes were knocked down in order to round that space off.
Other hon. Members have raised what I think is a very interesting point. I am not technically qualified to comment on it, but it seems to me to be one part of the London scene that we have not really looked at.

Mr. Mellish: The hon. Member asks why this happens in London. He is a member of the L.C.C. He should ask the question at that level and get the answer.

Mr. Compton Carr: I was not asking why it was happening. I said that my constituents had been asking.

Mr. Mellish: Tell them.

Mr. Compton Carr: I do. The answer is because the L.C.C. is not quite so settled in its mind as to what to do about housing as it makes out.

Mrs. Corbet: The hon. Gentleman knows that there is a development plan for London which has been approved by the Minister, and that that plan zones London for such purposes as light


industry, residences, commercial property and so on. Once an area has been zoned for light industry, then light industry has the right to go there. If it is, after all, denied the chance, the County Council must pay compensation.

Mr. Compton Carr: That is what I say makes certain that the L.C.C. was too short-sighted about its housing problem.
Another point which ties in with the question of zoning for light industry is the fact that these premises are very often single storeyed or two- or three-storeyed, even in Central London. As the underground trains come into the open in my constituency, one can see the single-storey factories taking up a great deal of space. People there are beginning to ask why residential property should not be built over these premises, insulated from them perhaps by office accommodation in between.
They are beginning to ask—quite rightly—whether we can really afford to have single storey or two storey buildings in the centre of London. This is pertinent to the debate because, after all, once upon a time people talked in terms of incorporating schools into living accommodation, and the L.C.C. does that with some nursery schools. Where we get permission to incorporate a nursery school into a new building, we do so.
The hon. Lady may say, as I do, that we do not have enough nursery schools, but as we have incorporated some already into buildings in this way, I do not see why we should not be able to do the same by incorporating single storey school buildings into new blocks.
There may be very good reasons against it, but nevertheless the quasi-homeless—those on the verge of home-lessness—raise this point strongly. As I say, I am not a technical man, but I echo their feelings as to why we allow not only railway land to be unbuilt on but also single storey buildings to remain which could very well be built upon.
These are minor points and I hope that the House will forgive me for merely interrupting the debate, but to my people they are very pertinent.

2.45 a.m.

Mr. Arthur Lewis: I think I am right in saying that no hon. Member from outer parts of London, except my hon. Friend the Member for Southall (Mr. Pargiter), has so far taken part in this debate. But this is not only a London problem. As has been said, it affects most of the great industrial cities and, of course, it certainly affects areas such as mine in the eastern part of London.
Having listened to this debate and to many similar ones, I suggest that it is time that the Government got down to the job of saying that something is to be done, because this problem has been with us for many years. These debates take place regularly every year, and on each occasion hon. Members on both sides give the Minister facts, figures and information, all of which he knows only too well, and then Chare are the usual excuses and explanations of why nothing is done.
If—and God forbid that this should be so—we were at war and the Government wanted something done, they would get it done. Even now, if for military purposes the Government want something done it is done. The necessary money is provided, and the job is carried out. I suggest that the problem that we are discussing ought to be dealt with as a military operation.
There axe thousands of homeless families in this country, and there are thousands of others who are inadequately housed. Many of these people have been waiting 10, 15 and 20 years to be rehoused. In my constituency young couples aged 21 or 22 come to see me about their problems. Many of them have been waiting for two or three years to be housed, and they tell me that their parents had to wait ten or twelve years to be rehoused. I suggest that if this problem were dealt with as a military operation it would soon be solved. The trouble is that the Government do not realise the urgency of it.
I recently saw the new Chelsea barracks. This project was announced only a few months ago, but now there are these magnificent barracks for the troops, and good luck to them. Again, when I was in the B.A.O.R. recently I saw some beautiful houses and flats being built for the troops and their


families. Good luck to them too. I do not begrudge them this accommodation. All I say is that if the Government made up their minds to tackle this problem as a military operation it would soon be solved.
We all know that the Treasury has not helped in dealing with this problem. In fact, the Government have deliberately aggravated it over the years by their financial policies. They have made it very difficult for local authorities to borrow money at reasonable rates of interest to build council houses. They have made it well nigh impossible for private individuals to borrow money from building societies. They can do it only if they earn a large income or are able to put down a huge deposit. These homeless people are mainly very poor. Hence, they neither have the large deposits which are necessary in the case of building society mortgages, nor can they afford the large repayments. Because of the Government's policy of high interest rates, reflected by the building societies, they cannot afford to purchase houses. Equally, if they try to borrow from local authorities at 100 per cent. or even 90 per cent. they find that local authorities are in the same position, because they have to borrow on the market, or through the Public Works Loan Board, in which case the rates are much too high for these homeless people to pay.
It is about time that the Government told local authorities and the ordinary house purchasers that they will grant 100 per cent. mortgages at low rates of interest. The Minister looks at me as I say that, but I see no reason why the Government cannot come forward—

Sir K. Joseph: I was not frowning about that, but at the thought that the problem behind this is the absolute shortage of dwellings. It is the competition for them, and not the money, that matters.

Mr. Lewis: The Government could easily finance 100 per cent. mortgages, at low rates of interest. The Minister has referred to the problem of finding accommodation. There is a simple answer. We should stop building these superfluous blocks of offices and let the builders get on with the job of building homes. Let the builders cease building garages every

100 yards along the road and put up houses. Let them stop building big supermarkets next door to each other and get on with building houses. Let them stop building bingo shops and betting shops. Then there would be plenty of building workers, materials and money available to get on with the really important job.

Mr. Paul Williams: Bingo shops and betting shops are usually conversions. Is the hon. Member suggesting that housewives should have to make do with a less good service than she can get from supermarkets? Is he suggesting that we should not have better office accommodation? I have always understood that hon. Members opposite were in favour of better offices.

Mr. Lewis: I am in favour of good shops—even betting shops. But it is far better for people to have roofs over their heads, and for a husband to sleep with his wife and have his children at home than to have betting shops. A man can have his betting shops after he has his house, and is living with his wife and children. If there is building material and money to spare, then by all means let housewives have supermarkets, even if they are built next door to each other. But I object to the fact that all these other buildings should be erected while dozens of my constituents are homeless.
I know of many cases where the husband is living in one workhouse and the wife in another, and the children are away in a home. Only last Thursday I went to see one of these poor women, who was literally crying her eyes out and threatening to do anything because she was faced with the threat of eviction from the rest centre, where she had been for a long time, in order that the accommodation could be given to someone else. By all means let us have good offices and all the other good things. But first we must see that families who need housing accommodation can get it. I think that the Treasury should provide the money. Buildings material and labour are available and by means of building controls we should prevent the money and materials being wasted on less essential building. That would also help to solve the problem of inflation which concerns the Chancellor and the Treasury. Many of


my constituents have told me that on their wage of £12 or £14 a week they cannot afford a mortgage and they cannot afford to pay £5 or £6 a week for furnished rooms. But they would sacrifice that amount on weekly payments if they were able to buy the property because they had been able to get a 100 per cent. mortgage. I do not see why the Treasury should not do something on those lines.
I have never been able to understand why so much sympathy is extended to the private landlord. The 1957 Rent Act is one of the major causes of the problems which confront so many people who are homeless. But when that Measure was being debated in this House there ware crocodile tsars from hon. Members opposite at the plight of the poor landlords who had to struggle to make ends meet because they did not receive sufficient rent. There are houses in my constituency which are 100, 150 or 200 years old which cost perhaps £50 or £60 to build. They are in poor condition and not a ha'penny has been spent on repairs. But they change hands at £2,000 or £3,000. The landlords get their money back hundreds of times over. I know of no other article which is worth twenty or thirty times more when it is a hundred years old. If the hon. Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. P. Williams) buys a car, it will not be worth double the price next year. But if he invested his money in property he would get more than his money back. The older the property the more money is made.
These poor landlords of whom we have heard have not got much to grumble at. If they cannot afford to make the places habitable, if they do not think they should carry out repairs and decorations, let the council take them over. I speak for myself. This may not be Labour Party policy. I say in my constituency and I say tonight that I do not see any objection to taking them over lock, stock and barrel and ensuring that the people are properly used and the houses repaired and decorated.
There are plenty of houses in my constituency which are being left vacant because the landlords hope to sell them. There are many houses the tenants of

which are not given the chance of staying on as the houses become decontrolled. One dear widowed lady told me that she has been in her house twenty-five years. She has not once been in arrears with her rent, although about fifteen years ago she lost her husband. She has brought up a young family. The house has become decontrolled and she has now been told to get out because the landlord wants to sell the house. There is no question of any agreement. That lady will be put on the homeless list. She will be one of the homeless, because my council says, "We have not got accommodation to rehouse you". She will go into a rest centre because this landlord who has made a fortune out of this poor hard working woman but has never done any repairs or decorations—she has done them—wants to get rid of her to make a big profit, because of the Rent Act. This Government have given him the chance to do it.
It is about time that the Government really got down to the job of housing not only the homeless but those who are liable to become homeless. The first thing is not new legislation but the repeal of the Rent Act. We should do something to insist—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Robert Grimston): Order. The hon. Gentleman must not embark on legislation.

Mr. Lewis: I apologise, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I will not go further on that line. Let the Government, therefore, without any new legislation use the powers they already have to stop some of this wasteful pulling down of property. The hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Compton Carr) mentioned an L.C.C. site. I do not know the site. I invite him to go to Edgware Road. After I have spoken and stayed for a reasonable time, I will take him and return to the House later in the morning for the rest of the debate. I will show him acres of beautiful Georgian and Victorian houses at the back of Edgware Road and Paddington which are being pulled down. They are beautful residences. There is nothing wrong with them. They are being pulled down for office property development. The property developers there find that offices will be more profitable than houses and flats for workers. They will not erect


houses and offices for workers. They erect office accommodation and luxury flats.

Mr. Compton Carr: This bears out what I said. This has been zoned for office and commercial use but it should have been zoned by the L.C.C. originally for residential use. This is why these developers can do this.

Mr. Lewis: The hon. Member talked about zoning for light industrial work. Here the existing properties are being pulled down for redevelopment. These are good properties. If these private property developers are really interested, they should get on with the job of building houses and flats for the workers.
I know a property developer—he is not exactly a friend, but I know him fairly intimately—who for some years has been trying to build on three sites accommodation to be let at artisans' rents, for which planning permission has been granted. When he tried to get the finance the bank said "No, the Treasury says there is a squeeze on. You cannot have the money." When he went to the building society he was told "No, the squeeze is on. You cannot have the money," When I approached the Minister's predecessor he said "I cannot interfere This is a matter for the banks or the building societies." The banks and the building societies said, "We cannot do anything because we have had instructions from the Treasury that this is an undertaking for which money should not be used because there is a squeeze on." When we explained all this to the Treasury and said that this was a good scheme which had been approved by the local authority concerned, that the houses were to be let at rents which the artisan class could afford, the Treasury said "You must take that up with the Ministry of Housing and Local Government." The Ministry of Housing and Local Government said "That is nothing to do with us. You must take it up with the banks." This is a case of the dog chasing its tail.
If a man who requires to develop private property comes along with a scheme like that, surely it is not too much for the Minister to suggest to the banks or the building societies that this is the sort of scheme which he would, subject to the usual safeguards, welcome

and like to see put into operation. If there are private developers willing to build blocks of houses for the artisan class at economic rents which they can afford to pay—

Sir K. Joseph: If the hon. Member will let me have the details I will do what I can.

Mr. Lewis: The firm has one of the finest names to be found in the House. This man is not related to me, but if the right hon. Gentleman looks it up in his records he will find it there.
The Minister ought to get down to the job. I am in no way castigating the present Minister because we all know from his activities in his previous position that he is very humane and understanding and he is a go-ahead Minister. All we ask is that he will, with his deep and intimate knowledge of the building industry, see that the various ideas, schemes and suggestions put forward by hon. Members are considered, not from the point of view of whether the Government would like to have them put into operation but judged on the basis of helping to solve the housing problem.
Probably I should not say this, but I believe that if the Government really got down to dealing with the housing situation they would not have any election problems. There would be no need for "Mac the Knife" to be active or for any of the things that have happened recently. If the Government got down to the task of solving the housing problem they would be very popular, and deservedly so, among the electorate at large and they would find that electoral benefits would accrue to them.
Therefore, I ask the Minister to see that every help and assistance is given to the local authorities by persuading the Treasury to give special financial grants at low rates of interest and that people who want to borrow can borrow, a 100 per cent. preferably, but certainly 90 per cent., at low rates. Then he should try to control this wasteful expenditure of manpower and building material on building which, if not entirely non-essential, is definitely less essential. That is the thing about which people are getting really annoyed. If the Minister can do this, then I know that my constituents will say that, at last, in one respect the Government have done a good job.
Yet the Government have been in office for eleven years and, unfortunately, we have to say that this thing has been made far worse in my constituency than it was eleven years ago.

3.10 a.m.

Dr. Alan Glyn: I do not want to detain the House at this hour, but I would venture to say that no problem is insoluble whether it be housing or anything else. That is my view, and I agree with hon. Members who have said so tonight. But I disagree with the hon. Member for West Ham, North (Mr. G. Lewis) in his remarks about zoning in the Edgware Road. Areas are zoned by the L.C.C., and if it is found that too much has been zoned for light industrial development, or for shops or offices, then, under present legislation one has to wait five years before that zoning can be altered. However much one may wish to see this area used for housing, a great deal of compensation would be involved.
Perhaps the appraisal was originally made without cognizance being taken of the acute shortage of housing accommodation which would arise in the following years.

Mr. Jay: Without trying to apportion the blame, we get into this extraordinary situation that in some areas offices are being built where there were houses before. In other areas where there were no houses before compensation has to be paid to prevent offices being built. So we get more offices and fewer houses.

Dr. Glyn: If one wants to carry that to an even greater extent, look at the Mayfair area where many of the office licences have been extended to 1973. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that this does tend to reduce the amount of residential accommodation in the centre of London and in the outer areas.
Although a most tragic problem, the homeless represent only part of a much larger problem. They are just that fringe of people who are helpless and homeless, but there are many people living in equally hopeless conditions. Any hon. Member sitting for a London constituency will agree that probably 70 per cent. of the cases which come to us are concerned with housing.

Mr. Jay: Ninety or 95 per cent.

Dr. Glyn: The right hon. Gentleman says 95 per cent., but perhaps he will agree that, whatever the figure, a very high proportion of the people who come to see us represent some form of the housing problem.

Mr. A. Lewis: And the hon. Member cannot do anything for them.

Dr. Glyn: One can write to the local authority, but there is just not the accommodation to give. There is the problem of the split families, whether homeless or not, and many others who have children and who cannot get accommodation and who have to live with half of the family staying with parents or in-laws or elsewhere. These things cause great upheavals in family life.
I submit that the problem is simply one of a shortage of accommodation. I disagree with hon. Members opposite about the Rent Act. I shall not go into all the pros and cons about it, but I suggest that we must look at the overall picture. There is not a great deal of accommodation which, as a result of the Rent Act, is not occupied. Perhaps the rents are higher, but the accommodation is occupied. Looking at the overall picture, one finds that the Rent Act may have increased the rents but it has not in fact reduced the amount of accommodation available, with the one exception of property which is held by landlords sometimes so that they may get vacant possession and sell.

Mr. Michael Cliffe: If the hon. Gentleman argues that the Rent Act has had no serious effect, how does he explain the fact that about 40 per cent. of the homeless in London are in their present plight as a result of the working of the Rent Act?

Dr. Glyn: The hon. Gentleman has not got the point I was making. If there is a given amount of accommodation in the Metropolis, then, whether the rents go up or not, if that accommodation is occupied one cannot say that the amount of accommodation has been reduced. The only exception I made was in my reference to certain landlords who, for obvious reasons, wish not to let part of a house in the hope of getting full


possession so that they may sell with vacant possession. However, the extent of this is quite small and it does not appreciably affect the overall housing picture.
Hon. Members have spoken about local authorities not taking action about overcrowding. We all sympathise with local authorities in this matter. They know very well that, if they take too much cognisance of overcrowding, they will themselves be placed in an awkward position because they will not be able to find places for the people they turn out. They are to some extent powerless to do very much about overcrowding.
There are many things which must be done to increase the amount of housing accommodation. For one thing, one authority should be responsible for housing. In my own area, as I have said many times, most of the vacant land and large sites have been absorbed by the London County Council, leaving very little for the local borough council to use in solving its own problems. Sixteen and a half acres were recently taken, with the result that the borough council finds itself in further difficulty in acquiring suitable land for housing its own people and reducing the size of its waiting list.
I have never suggested that increasing densities will be the panacea to cure all our housing ills, but I ask my right hon. Friend to give close attention to this question. There are many areas of London where, if the densities were increased—transport facilities are there and the sites are suitable—many more people could be accommodated. We must, I suggest, depart from the conventional idea that within three, five or even ten miles of the centre of London we can still have nice little houses with gardens, very pleasant though they are, and afford to use all that amount of space when Londoners so urgently need more land for homes.
We have been reminded tonight about the railway land which could be developed. I raised this matter myself two years ago. Near my constituency there are large sites which could be used with advantage. Now that diesel traction is used on many of our main lines, the

problem of smoke is greatly reduced, and quite a lot of railway land could well be used. Even the lines themselves could be built over and used for either office or residential accommodation. I hope that my right hon. Friend will take very seriously the suggestions which have been made and consider the overall question of how much land is available in the centre of London which is not at present being used for housing or anything else.
I should like to put to my right hon. Friend a point which has given rise to considerable anxiety. I refer to local authorities' powers of compulsory purchase. In many cases, I have found that landlords have been careful not to demand excessive rents from tenants. When property has become decontrolled, they have not said "I want £X". They have said that they do not wish to relet the property. Then, they either sell it or wait a considerable time and let it at a much higher rent. That, I understand, is the method by which they can evade compulsory acquisition by the local authority. I am not sure about this and I should like my right hon. Friend to indicate how these cases stand.
Earlier, the question of mortgages was mentioned. I have only two points to make. One of the great difficulties con-cerning mortgages is that local authorities do not always value the property at market value. They value it at the price which they think it should fetch, which is very different from what a purchaser has to pay. This raises difficulties concerning the amount which the local authority is able to advance on the property, which may be only 70 per cent. of the purchase price, thus causing difficulties for the purchaser to acquire the property. Local authorities lag behind in assessing the market value of properties. A reappraisal in this direction should be considered. On other occasions I have mentioned the possibility of the purchase of flats.
I do not expect my right hon. Friend to give an overall answer now to the many problems which have been put to him, but is it not possible for the Government to consider the whole London picture and the availability of land and to formulate a much longer-term policy. We must cater not for three or five years,


but for much longer than that. We must view the picture in perspective and look at the areas which are hopelessly underdeveloped. In my constituency, there are areas in which the houses are old and there is an enormous expanse of large gardens in the centre. By redevelopment, if we were allowed to increase the density, which the London County Council will not allow, we could solve a great deal of the shortage in the Metropolis.
We have to look at the problem, not from a local authority point of view. We cannot hide behind the mask of the responsibility being either the local council or the London County Council. It is a problem which is too great for any local authority to tackle. It is something in which, whether they like it or not, the Government must help. I do not like to see local authorities powers interefered with—I like them to have their own powers; but this problem is of such great magnitude and strikes at the heart of so many people in the great cities that the Government must, on this occasion, lead by saying, "We realise that there is a shortage and we will do everything possible to solve it."
I know that when my right hon. Friend replies, he will explain that one of the greatest difficulties is the shortage of building labour. If, however, a reappraisal of the importance of the various sections of the industry were undertaken, we might decide to have more emphasis on living accommodation as against other forms of building. If my night hon. Friend would examine the areas of London where there is under-development and let us have an overall plan, whether or mot that would mean overriding the local authorities, it would in the long run be for the benefit of London and its citizens.

3.25 a.m.

Mr. Percy Holman: I am delighted that we are getting a certain amount of support in the discussion of London's housing problems from hon. Members opposite. The hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Compton Carr), however, who said that he could not understand why a certain area was scheduled for light industry where at present there was a certain amount of dwelling-houses and suggested that the

L.C.C. had not made up its mind on the matter, made such an ignorant statement as a member of London County Council that it was appalling. The hon. Member did not understand that in the nineteenth century it mixed up industrial premises and private dwelling-houses higgledy-piggledy all over London. This is part of the need to separate industry from dwelling-houses.
The hon. Member should realise the position in which some of us found ourselves during and soon after the war. Industry was often working day and night with the factory windows only a few feet from bedroom windows. People could get no sleep and were driven hysterical by the noise. They were appalled by the stench and sometimes the smoke which came from some industries in London. We want to separate the industrial from the residential—not merely put offices between, but separate them by sensible planning.
It was an absurd position that insufficient attention was able to be given to the real problems of homelessness in London. It has been termed semi-home-lessness and, naturally, the inquiry dealt only with those families who as a last resort held back on the welfare services of London County Council. But there are many other literally homeless families dealt with by voluntary organisations and many others equally homeless when the husband and wife have to live with their respective parents. That equally is homelessness. There are those who literally have no roof over their heads. These amount to thousands in the County of London. In many cases they are included in the waiting lists of 30,000 or more families, deferred because slum clearance and other special requirements are eating up not only the new premises, but using up the oldest and sub-standard properties which London County Council and the boroughs have in their possession.
This problem is very large and involves long-term policies. I am surprised that there has been a conspiracy of silence about one of the biggest problems with which London is faced in rehousing. That is the land problem. The other day I was asked about an acre of land in Islington. My friend asked, "Why don't the L.C.C. or the borough council build on that land?" I asked what was its price and I was


told that it was £100,000. I said that probably with the density which is permitted there would be about £2,250 per flat before a single brick was laid. Until recently there has been no subsidy for normal housing needs; it has been limited to slum clearance and building for the aged. We cannot get anything near the economic rent on such a basis as that, even after allowing full subsidy.
It is no good, with land values as they are, to think that we can house anyone with less than the breadwinner's income of £20 a week inside the County of London. That day is passing. The lower paid workers are steadily being thrust out of London, or they have to accept a lower and lower standard of living. Immigrants coming in are paying £3 and £4 a week for a room even in the slums. They are used to a lower standard of life than our people, a lower standard even than roughish Irish labourers would tolerate for their families. They are becoming the lower paid workers of London, and are taking these jobs.
The land problem of London is such that one-third of an acre of railway property in Poplar is worth £100,000, according to an independent valuer. That is the sort of problem we are up against. It is not only a London problem. It is found over the whole of the South-East of England.

Mr. Graham Page: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves London, may I ask him, if land is such a problem, why is the London County Council using five acres of 90½ acres at Roehampton for an approved school which will accommodate only 80 girls instead of using it for housing?

Mr. Holman: I am not dealing with that individual problem, but I mentioned it previously and said I thought it seemed rather more than necessary; but for an approved school one does need some playing space.
The reason, I believe, why land values in London and the south-east of England are so high is fundamentally this, that insufficient land has been scheduled for building purposes. The Alliance Building Society of Brighton, in a recent very interesting pamphlet, stated that the amount of land scheduled

for building in the South-East Region represented between 12 and 18 months of building. That is playing directly into the hands of the speculator.
Land is passing from one to another speculator and land values are mounting precipitately. On the Kent coast, only two hours distance from London, 15 acres with an old house on them sold for £65,000 two and a half years ago; 18 months later it changed hands for £75,000. The old house was pulled down and now flats are being put up. That means an enhanced rate. Just outside the borders of London, in Middlesex, my son bought a plot of land seven years ago for £600. In the same road six months ago another plot, not in quite such a good position, with not quite so big a road frontage, fetched £1,500—two and a half times the value in a period of six years.
I understand that the Minister's predecessor recently circularised local authorities in the London and Greater London area, asking them if they could schedule more land for building purposes. I do not know if the Minister has yet had any results. A common experience is that on one side of a road the agricultural land is worth £200 or £250 an acre, and on the other side of the road, a few yards away, the land has become worth thirty or forty times as much because it is scheduled for building purposes.
Most of the people in the south-east of England will pay during their lives, as will their children, many pounds a year more for their properties because of the inadequate amount of land scheduled for building purposes. There cannot be vetry much more than 10 per cent. of the land in south-east England scheduled not built on today. There is hardly any land left for building. No wonder land values are soaring until they represent in many cases between a third and a half of the value of the property. Small houses round London fetch £6,000 or £7,000 when only a few years ago— no question of control or the Rent Act enters into this—they were less than half that. No wonder the report states that the values of London houses went up by 33⅓ per cent. between 1st January, 1959, and 31st December, 1960. I guarantee that more than half the increase was due to the increased value


of the land on which the houses stood. It could not have been the building costs which had gone up in that period.
If the Minister would say that in due course the large amount of sub-standard housing that exists in London would have to be modernised by the owners, and that there would be a time limit— the alternative being disposal of it to the local authority—the value of the property would collapse probably to not very much more than the value of the land because of the heavy expense of madernising such property. The only reason why I am a strong advocate of local authorities taking over housing which has 10 to 20 years of life is that it would secure for the rented section of property in the London area a greater proportion of properties than would otherwise be the case. I know that such property is a nuisance to local authorities and that they feel they can do only a little modernising, but by good management they will make such property more habitable and tolerable for the people.
I hope that the Minister will take note of the statement of his predecessor to me on 12th July that a decision about the request by Bethnal Green Council in respect of a compulsory purchase order would be made within a few days. In my opinion "a few days" is less than a fortnight. While I accept that we must allow a few days more when we have a change of Minister, I hope that the decision will be made soon. As the rents asked in the decontrolled flats, which are very sub-standard—without bathrooms or adequate hot water arrangements—are 5-f times the gross value, 1 hope that the local authority—

Sir K. Joseph: The hon. Member will be prejudicing his case if he enters into something which is really sub judice.

Mr. Holman: I will not proceed with it. I was merely asking when the compulsory purchase order would be out. I was using it as an illustration as a way of helping local authorities to obtain a larger proportion of the remaining and reducing rented property of London so that the lower-paid workers—in that category today I put any breadwinner earning less than £20 per week—in central London may still live within a reasonable distance of where they work.
The Central London markets cannot be supplied with labour at the times they require from the out-county estates of Kent, Surrey, or Essex. The workers could not gat there early enough in the morning. The same applies to many other jobs in Central London. The office cleaners, for instance, have to start work very early in the morning.
I hope the right hon. Gentleman will give serious attention to the need for more land to be made available for housing in the south-east of England and the Greater London area, for that in itself would reduce land values. Any reduction on the perimeter of London would have its reaction in the centre in reduced values, and that is an essential feature in trying to help hold the cost of property down to a figure that the workers can afford.
This applies equally to the white-collar workers, who are paying up to one-third and even more of their salaries in buying their homes. That was probably one of the biggest causes of the Government's sensational defeat at Orpington.
Again, the number of rented properties in London is diminishing, it is estimated, by 10,000 a year. They are being sold to owner-occupiers. Many people have bought old cottages for fancy figures and then have redecorated and modernised them. That applies to old working class houses in Chelsea, Fulham, parts of Highbury and elsewhere.
This reduction is serious. Added to it is the fact that private developers, when they pull down old property, have no obligation to rehouse those displaced, and from the land occupied by the law-rent property there emerge luxury flats. This means that the lowest paid wage earners are probably reducing in numbers bit by bit every year. But the accommodation available to them is diminishing even faster. That means that today there is no such thing as a price which would be arrived at between a willing buyer and a willing seller. The rent value of such property is a scarcity value which arises at least in part from the inadequate consciousness of successive Governments as to the number of people in the south-east of England. That population growth has been underestimated from the end of the last war.
We may assume that the population of Britain will rise by 10 million in the next 20 years, which is not an unfair assumption. We may also assume that, even with all the efforts to get commerce and industry and non-essential clerical work out of London to other parts of the country—and the Government could give a good lead in that direction—probably 2 million of that 10 million will be found in the south of England, and therefore I hope that the policy of the Minister will be to take a long view and to look twenty years ahead on the assumption that there will be an increase of 2 million in the population in the south-east of England, and to act accordingly.

3.45 a.m.

Mr. A. Fenner Brockway: I think that those who have sat throughout this debate will recognise a feature which is perhaps unusual when debates take place during the night. I am referring to the fact that from the moment when my horn. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) opened this discussion the debate has been deadly serious. There has been none of that frivolity, none of that obstruction, none of that playing with the situation which has so often marked debates during the night.
This discussion was started with a speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey who, in the most extraordinary way, supplemented great human feeling with great knowledge of the subject It reminded me very much of the speeches one heard years ago from George Buchanan on the subject of unemployment. When unemployment was the greatest social evil in our midst, he spoke with similar human compassion, yet with an extraordinary knowledge of every detail of the administration of assistance and regulations. The great value of the speech of my hon. Friend was that it combined human feeling with that detailed knowledge which is so useful to the House.
Most of the debate has been concentrated on homelessness in London, but I think that whatever part of the country we represent in this House we must recognise that the problem of homelessness is more acute in London than anywhere else. This problem exists in those areas of the country where there is

pressure of labour, not so much in the social welfare activities conducted by the London County Council, but in other spheres. My experience in my constituency is that the shortage of housing is the worst social evil that there is in our land at the moment, causing more un-happiness, more ill health, more mental distress, causing more than anything else the breaking up of families, and causing the commission of crimes, especially among the younger generation.
I want to emphasise one result of the housing shortage. Some weeks ago I asked the Minister of Housing if he would instigate an inquiry about the number of newly-wedded couples who, on their marriage, were able to obtain homes. He did not think that such an inquiry was worth making. Since then, however, a newspaper with a very wide circulation has made such an inquiry, and its results must be shocking to any hon. Member who, looking to the next generation, sees that it must be built upon the young people of today as they get married. In case a newspaper investigation may not be accepted, I have made a detailed inquiry in my constituency. For some weeks I have written to every newly-married couple whose marriage has been announced in the local newspaper, inquiring what their prospects for a home was when they were married. I want to make that investigation more thorough even than it has been so far, and I propose to revert to the matter in the new Session.
Tonight I can say that in Slough it is practically impossible for any young people who get married to obtain a home of their own. They must either live with their in-laws, as has been described in earlier speeches, or live in one-roomed lodgings, in such crowded conditions that the beginning of their married life can have little opportunity.
It has been said during the debate that the concentration of industry in London and the south of England has been a great advantage to our economy, has meant that light industries—such as electronics and plastics—have developed, and has been of particular help in our export trade. That can be said truly of the industry in Slough, but if that is recognised it must surely be the duty of the Government, representing a country whose economy has advanced in that kind of way, to see that the


workers who pour into these areas are housed. The problem in Slough, which has been described as the most prosperous town in this country, is that of extending factories and vacancies in the employment exchange, with all its opportunities of work, but with no homes in which the workers can live.
If this country is to take pride in the development of its economy and industry, the least it can do is to see that the workers employed in that way have an opportunity of accommodation and homes.
So often in these debates the reply from the Government refers to the fact that the number of houses built has increased, and pride is taken in that fact. In Slough one can see new houses. But they are not for the workers of Slough The largest private speculative builder in Slough has said that 90 per cent. of the people who have bought the houses have neither worked nor lived in Slough before. They lived in London where they work and now they are commuting from Slough. The problem of the people of Slough has hardly been affected.
I do not see on the opposite benches the hon. Member about whose speech I wished to comment. He said that the increased rents charged under the Rent Act had not meant a decrease in the accommodation occupied. It has not. But it has meant that the accommodation has not gone to the people who need it most. It has not gone to families with children or to those who are ill and sick. Hon. Members on this side of the House have urged that housing ought to be regarded as a social service and that houses should be provided first for those who need them most. That should be as much a social service as the National Health Service. We have discussions on housing year after year, but I refuse' to believe that the problem is beyond the capacity of human being to solve. Food, clothing and housing are the first essentials of human life. If they cannot be provided we are not putting first things first.
In this amazing scientific age. when we are baying the moon and when we see in our homes television programmes which come to us by way of the great spaces, to say that we are unable to solve the problem of providing human

beings with roofs over their heads is a kind of defeatism which I refuse to accept. I would forgive much of a Minister and a Government which solved the housing problem. It would be the greatest contribution to human development, fulfilment, happiness and health that any Government could give. It is the greatest social task now before Parliament and I beg the House to apply its constructive capacity so that this problem may be solved in our time.

4.0 a.m.

Mr. G. H. R. Rogers: At this time of the morning one gets the feeling that everything has been said, especially as this is by no means the first debate we have had on this subject in the last year or two. As we have only another six or seven hours before the debate finishes, I do not propose to be very long. I become rather depressed when I listen to the solutions of some hon. Members. As far as I can gather, some hon. Members would be quite happy to see the whole of the South of England covered wish buildings from end to end. They would be quite happy if all the land in Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire and Kent—the Garden of England —were covered with factories and buildings, as though that in itself would solve the problem. At the geometric rate of progression of the population, by the time we have another fifty or sixty years over our heads—presumably we must have some regard for posterity—we should find that there would be nowhere left in the South of England where people could see green grass or get a breath of fresh air, and the whole of the Midlands and the North of England and Scotland would be denuded of population because everybody had moved into the South-east.
This is a stupid way of looking at this problem. We all know that the solution to this problem of housing is not difficult in theory. We all know the way to solve it. The fact is that the Government refuse to face up to the solution, as they have done with so many of the problems facing the country.
I, like other hon. Members, have great hopes of this Minister. I used to sit and listen to the right hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Brooke) and I always had the feeling that, whatever one said


to him about our housing problems, he was completely unmoved. I felt that he was insensitive, unimaginative and incapable of grasping the sufferings of ordinary people. My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr. Brockway) referred to George Buchanan and employment. I well remember Neil Maclean, a wild Clydesider, saying in this broad Scottish accent from the Opposition back benches in about 1923 when the House was debating unemployment, "Some hon Members opposite have never done a day's work in their life". That was a constant taunt from these benches. I cannot help feeling that if Cabinet Ministers had at some time in their lives lived in slums and been chivvied by landlords, as so many of the people have been, they would have a much greater understanding of the housing problems of the working people. The fact is that so many of them—this is a psychological truth—were born with a silver spoon in their mouths and have had comfortable housing conditions all their lives and, through no fault of their own, cannot understand the intensity of the housing misery that so many people suffer. This is something which must be faced.
I have always felt that previous Ministers were insensitive. I know from personal experience of this Minister that he is far from insensitive. He has an imaginative understanding of many problems. I hope that he will, as hon. Members suggest, go down to posterity as the Minister who solved the housing problem. I have sat on the Front Bench, as a Whip, for so many years muzzling myself and listening to what other Members have had to say. One of the things which disgusts me about hon. Members opposite is that they never have the guts to stand on their own record. Whenever this question of housing is raised they say that the six years immediately after the war are equivalent to the years which are passing now. They always pretend that it is fair to compare the Tory Government's record fifteen years after the war and the Labour Government's record five years after the war. They deliberately ignore the bombing and the fact that 800,000 houses had to be repaired, that men were taken out of the brickfields

and put into the Forces. They ignore the cessation of the manufacture of light castings for housing and the fact that all the necessary industries had to be set up again. They say "We did so much better than you". This they know is perfectly dishonest.
There are people who are homeless today, who cannot remember when there was a Labour Government in office because hon. Members opposite have been in office for more than a decade. People of 25 years of age and even older, who are homeless and married with children, cannot remember when there was a Labour Government. All these charges of the failure of the Labour Government in the years following the war would cut no ice at all with that generation. This is one of the reasons why hon. Members opposite are finding themselves at the bottom of the poll, with the Liberals second, because they will not face up to reality.
We hear denials that the Rent Act has anything to do with this problem. Every constituent who has suffered from the housing problem as a result of the operation of the Rent Act knows what caused it. But hon. Members opposite say that the Rent Act has nothing to do with it and they lose votes by the score.
I can give two instances of suffering in my own constituency which were the direct result of the Rent Act. My constituency has suffered from the exploiting landlord almost more than any other. We have had Hungarian refugees, Poles, people from the Commonwealth, all exploiting the housing situation and inflicting sufferings upon the people who were born in this island. Some of the stories do not bear telling. Recently 100 families were given notice by one landlord to quit—all at once. The effect upon these people was disastrous. Many of them will become homeless because they cannot find anywhere to go.
The excuse of the landlord was that he wanted to improve the property— a false excuse, in my view, because he could easily have emptied one house and improved it, having found other accommodation for the occupants, and then moved the people from the next house into the house which they had improved. But clearly he has other ulterior motives, with the result that 100 families are going to suffer and they are


extremely worried indeed. This is wholesale eviction.
There is an old lady, an old-age pensioner who does a cleaning job. Her total income is £6 5s. a week. She has been paying £4 15s. a week for her little accommodation and she has been living on what is left of the £6 5s. That has not been a very comfortable living. This is not the affluent society for her. The landlord now says that she can stay in her rooms if she will pay £6 a week out of the £6 5s. So the poor thing has got to go, and she is 72 years of age. She gets up in the mornings and goes to work cleaning the offices. The poor old thing has no relative and is broken hearted.

Mr. A. Lewis: Is my hon. Friend not aware that if she goes to the National Assistance Board she will be given a grant, and the ratepayers and taxpayers will be directly subsidising the landlord, as is the case with hundreds of thousands of these sharp landlords?

Mr. Rogers: I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. The eviction of these hundred families could not have taken place but for the operation of the Rent Act. The power given to these unscrupulous landlords flows directly from the Rent Act. Does the Government believe that landlords ought to have this power to put all these families on the streets in such great numbers with the simple result that the problem is placed a! the door of the L.C.C.; because a great many of them will have to be found accommodation by the L.C.C. if they are to be found accommodation at all.
Another device by landlords is, as I have found out, the letting of premises and the charging of a premium. The tenant is allowed to stay for a few months and is then given notice to quit. The flat is then let to somebody else, another premium is demanded and paid, and there is a constant stream of tenants because both landlord and agent by this means get a premium over and over again. I know of one flat which has had seven tenants in the last eighteen months by this process. I assure the Minister that this is quite a widespread

practice in west London among unscrupulous landlords.

Sir K. Joseph: I do not know my powers in this, but I should have thought that the tenants ought to have known their legal rights better than to have fallen into this trap. I do hope that the hon. Gentleman will send me details of these cases.

Mr. Rogers: Yes, but it is so often a case of making a choice between exercising one's legal rights and having a home; people pay just to get the flat.
It was the same story with the rent tribunals. They fixed the rent all right for the furnished rooms, but landlords then charged twice as much as that laid down by the tribunal, putting the proper figure into the rent book. Of course the tenant said nothing although he knew he was committing a breach of the tribunal's ruling simply because he had to have accommodation.
The housing shortage is so bad that people are prepared to overlook all these abuses of the law. This could not have happened before the operation of the Rent Act. Then, people were protected and, therefore, it is no use hon. Members denying that that Act is not responsible for so much of the misery affecting our people today. I do not believe that the solution of the problem is a difficult one, but the Government has got to face up to the fact that London is already too large and that a stop has got to be put to the process.
The south-east is over-populated. Steps ought seriously to be taken at last to divert industry to other parts of the country so that our island can be fairly populated from one end to the other and not have a great mass of people pushed into the south-eastern corner. Apart from anything else, I should have thought that that was bad from a strategic point of view because one or two hydrogen bombs would wipe out half the population of England.

Mr. Anthony Fell: I do not disagree with anything which the hon. Gentleman has said so far, but he surely does not suggest that we should build houses according to strategic considerations. Can we reorganise the whole of our country's building work according to the strategic situation?

Mr. Rogers: I thought that strategic considerations were always in the mind of the Government in considering, for instance, the way that armaments factories are located in different parts of the country. They have some regard to strategic considerations in these matters. The dispersal of the Civil Service to different areas was influenced to some extent by reference to what might happen in the event of war. I consider that this is a feasible solution, if the Government could make up their mind to spread industry throughout the country and spread the population, too.
If they feel that they cannot do that, perhaps they will consider the drastic step of changing the capital. Why not shift Parliament to Buxton or somewhere else? Let the Civil Service go with it. In that way, we might remove some of the magnetism which London has and divert it to Buxton, the centre of England, and create a new centre of gravity in our island. Something drastic must be done if the problem we face today is not to be with us for years to come.

4.16 a.m.

Mr. Michael Cliffe: Right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that homelessness is the most tragic social problem with which we have to deal. This is not to say that I regard other social problems as unimportant, but I do not believe that there can be anything worse for a man and his family than to be left homeless, with no sort of shelter at all.
The most frequent and the most depressing problem which one encounters in one's constituency is the housing problem. All hon. Members who do their constituency work know that this is so. People are given notice to quit, and they have just a few weeks, or sometimes only a few days, before they are turned out and left homeless. In an endeavour to help families in this plight, I have instituted a system of correspondence. First, I write to the landlord, appealing to him to reconsider his decision. Very often, the letter I send is not even acknowledged. I write to the London County Council and to the local authority. If the man happens to be an ex-Service man, I write

to the welfare section of the British Legion. I do all this in the hope that, one way or another, someone will be able to come to the rescue.
Very often, at the end of it all—I say this to hon. Members opposite who sometimes criticise the London County Council and the way it conducts its social services—all that is offered is accommodation in an L.C.C. institution, but the kind of accommodation offered in the institution often means that the family must be broken up. In a desperate effort to avoid this, the family appeal to members of their own family and to friends in the hope that one of them will be able to help. Even if help is forthcoming in that way, the family may still have to be broken up. There are very few people today who have sufficient accommodation to be able to take in a whole family of three or four people. So that they have still to be split up, with the result that it is sometimes months before they can be given assistance and we reach the point that the provision of accommodation is the only possible solution to reunite the family and to bring them back again to live together happily. It is difficult to assess the effect upon parents of these experiences by young people, but there can be no doubt in anybody's mind that there must be a profound and serious effect on the children, and one which they will remember for the whole of their life.
I know that there is no easy and ready-made solution. I understand the size of the problem because I happen to represent a Central London constituency. I am, however, bound to say that the Government's economic policy and their lack of industrial planning have considerably aggravated the position. There is serious unemployment and underemployment in Scotland and we know what is happening in north and north-East England, not to mention Wales. People who are declared redundant realise that there is little prospect of alternative employment in those areas and they come to London and other large industrial towns to find employment.
I am not attaching blame to those people for doing that. They are doing what I and many hundreds of thousands did 20 or 30 years ago, and for precisely


the same reasons. They come here seeking a living, and a good many of these immigrants remain here, I am convinced, only because work is more available. If the work was more widely spread and properly planned, I have no doubt that many of our housing problems would be solved.
Only a few months ago, the former Minister of Housing, the right hon. Member for Luton (Dr. Hill), stated in a debate that the solution rested with the London County Council because it had the necessary powers to deal with the homeless. It was fairly obvious to London Members that the right hon. Gentleman either did not know or understand the size of the problem, or he was deliberately trying to deceive the House. If either is true, I regret that the Prime Minister did not sack him then instead of waiting until a fortnight ago.
On the last occasion when the matter of London's homeless was debated on the Floor of the House, he spoke of the large number of families affected and said that London County Council had to do something about it. Two or three hon. Members opposite have said tonight that London County Council has only just awakened to the fact that there are so many homeless families, in spite of all the efforts 'the council has made. It wrote to all the local authorities in the area asking if there were vacant properties which could be obtained by compulsory purchase or otherwise to find accommodation for these families. Despite all its endeavours, over the last few months there has been an increase in the number of families who have to be accommodated toy the county council.
In 1959 there were 400 homeless families. In 1962 there are 800, representing over 2,000 people in 1959 and nearly 9,000 now. This, however, is not a true reflection of the position in London. Most local authorities are working under housing standards laid down by the 1936 Housing Act by which they are permitted to allow three persons to live in two rooms. In most London boroughs we would find literally hundreds, if not thousands, of families where four, five and more live in two rooms. If the councils complied with the standards laid down by the Act, the number of

homeless would be added to by 8,000 or 9,000.
A short time ago we were discussing the possibility of putting on to the Statute Book some legislation to deal with the question of overcrowding. I am not absolutely certain, but I think it is already an offence for a local authority to allow overcrowding. I may be wrong and, if so, I should like to be corrected.

Sir K. Joseph: Local authorities by the 1961 Act have been given the power to put a limit to overcrowding and to force landlords to put in more amenities if premises are overcrowded.

Mr. Cliffe: I thank the Minister for that reply. That provision does not help to solve the present housing problem.
A great deal has been said tonight about the real causes of the problem and a number of suggestions have been made to remedy it. It must be admitted by all fair-minded people that the Rent Act has aggravated the position considerably and added to the numbers of homeless people in London. Here are figures produced quite recently—for this debate, in fact. Families admitted by London County Council to short-stay accommodation were due to five main causes. One was landlords requiring accommodation, and that accounted for 22·5 per cant. That accounted for only 4 per cent. before the Rent Act, 1957. Another was houses sold over the heads of the tenants because rateable values were more than £40. Another was overcrowding, which accounted for 13 per cent. Domestic friction accounted for 10 per cant., and rent arrears for 6 per cent. There is a total of 41·5 per cent. of families evicted as a result of the Rent Act, and that category is growing every year.
It is estimated that there are approximately 20,000 tenants decontrolled and adding to the number every year in London. Most of these new victims are young couples unable to find accommodation. A young married couple start married life by living with in-laws for a few months, but after a time they all grate on one another's nerves and the young couple go round London desperately seeking accommodation, and take two rooms in a very old block and pay an exhorbitant rent. They try to make them habitable In my own constituency is Hamilton Buildings, but I shall not


say very much about that because I know there is a C.P.O. on the block. I am not going to say more about it. I got into trouble the other day for the same thing. But I can say this about another block of flats, Victoria Dwellings, which have been sold and bought and sold no fewer than five or six times over the last two years. Before 1958, and the latter part of—

Notice taken that 40 Members were not present.

House counted, and, 40 Members being present—

Mr. Cliffe: It is nice to know that there are so many hon. Members present. I am sure they are grateful to us for giving them the opportunity to get together and understand one another.
The Victoria Dwellings are a block of flats 100 years old. Long before the Rent Act came into operation the highest rent was 17s. 9d. per week. At present the rents are £5-£6 per week. When hon. Members opposite say that the Rent Act has not had a serious effect on the housing position and has not created problems unknown previously, certainly among the lower income groups, they are completely blind to the facts or are ignoring their existence.
Many of the families, which are in the main in the lower income groups, have to depend on both the man and the wife being able to go to work. If a wife becomes pregnant, the family is in trouble. It means that they cannot pay the rent and must seek other accommodation. But most landlords are now in the racket, and the level of rents is very much the same wherever one looks for privately-owned property in central London. So they go to the local authority for help, and very often, because of the heavy commitments that local authorities have, they have to depend on the London County Council welfare department to come to their rescue.
The London County Council helps as many as it can. In some cases it can give no more help than taking care of the children, and then the parents have to seek lodgings elsewhere. In fact, the possibility of people being offered accommodation by a local authority in central London is almost non-existent. Hon. Members opposite have spoken

about the land available in London, including railway sidings. If what they suggest is part of the solution to the problem, why are they telling us? Why do they not tell the Government, who could easily get on with it? But it is ridiculous to suggest that some of the railway sidings could be used for housing purposes, though they could be used for other purposes.
As to the price of land, recently the London County Council tried to reach agreement about an area in my constituency which is zoned for housing and is now required by the Ministry of Education for an extension to the Northampton Polytechnic. This area is roughly two acres. Immediately opposite St. John's Polytechnic stands Southwood Court, a block containing 210 flats completed in 1955. The land on which these flats stand was bought by Finsbury Council in 1953 for £80,000 an acre. One can stand with one foot on that land and one foot on the land now bought for the Ministry of Education—for £710,000.
I do not believe that anyone could say that it was not robbery to suggest that land in an area like that is worth so much. But the Government have taken the lid off, and the sky is the limit. They have released a very scarce commodity and people are fighting for it.
I hope that the facts and figures we have given tonight will be regarded by the right hon. Gentleman as a serious submission and not as exaggeration. These problems are as we have described them. I hope a solution will be found. I do not believe it will be found merely by something done in London. The Government must plan, however distasteful they find it, in such a way as to get more industry to areas where it will do a wealth of good for the people already there and also attract people from the London area who would be quite prepared to go if the work were available elsewhere.

4.43 a.m.

Mr. Austen Albu: It is a long time since I took part in a debate on housing, and I do not intend to make a very long speech. One of the difficulties of this problem is that we are dealing with a minority. It is very large in terms of suffering of a


large number of people, but in terms of electoral pressure it cannot be quite so great, certainly not in all areas of the country. But that does not make the suffering any the less. It is our duty to deal with the problem even if for some of us it is only a problem of minorities.
It has been said that this is not just a problem of the County of London, nor even of the Greater London area, but of every large industrial area where the employment rate is high. I represent a constituency on the edge of the London area. One might think that with its record Edmonton would not have a serious problem, and I do not claim that the problem there or in the boroughs in Middlesex is as serious as in some of the central areas. The closer one gets to the kernel, as it were, the higher the density. From the housing point of view the Greater London area is one area, and the pressures brought into London by the lack of industrial or commercial planning affect the areas round the outskirts just as much as they affect the centre of London.
Some areas in Middlesex are almost as built up as the centre of London. The result is that a borough like Edmonton cannot do very much in the way of putting up new buildings. Almost its entire programme is devoted to slum clearance, and it is inhibited from doing the little that it could do by the high cost of land and the high interest rates.
Hon. Members have pointed out that the mere numbers who appear to be homeless because they have to be dealt with by welfare authorities, ox because they come to see their Members, represent, as I Chink my hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Mrs. Corbet) put it, that part of an iceberg which is visible. A substantial number of people know that it is hopeless to try to get out of the conditions in which they are living. Those who have had to deal with cases of eviction, or of young married couples with nowhere to live, or of people living under appalling conditions of mental stress because of the intolerable behaviour of landlords or landladies, especially towards young couples who have children, know the total amount of misery which is caused by the present housing situation. Even though it repre-

sents only a minority of persons, it is probably as great a problem as any with which Parliament has had to deal.
What we often come across are difficulties which have arisen among the young and the very old. The young, because of their naturally low incomes, and the old, for obvious reasons, have no possible way of finding accommodation if they lose that in which they are now living. The idea that they can save to buy a house is ludicrous. They have to pay out such a large percentage of their earnings on their present accommodation that it is impossible for them to save. There is also the fact that the lower the value of a house, the more grossly over-priced it is, and therefore no building society will give anything like a substantial mortgage on it. The result is that to get such a house a person has to put down a deposit that is grossly inflated by the difference between the price at which the building society values the house, and the price that is being asked for it.
There is only one solution to this problem of the appalling prices being asked for houses to buy or rent, and that is to create a situation in which there are more houses than tenants or would-be purchasers, in a particular region. At present there may be more houses than persons wanting houses in some areas, while in others there may be infinitely more potential tenants or would-be purchasers than there are houses available. This situation must be dealt with. As soon as the number of houses exceeds the number of those wanting houses the whole bottom wild fall out of the price racket. Every effort should be made, not only by industrial planing but by a more intensive building programme, to reach this position in each region.
I do not know whether it is enough to build new towns. At one time these were thought to be relieving the pressure on London, but this process has now ceased. It is essential to get the last ounce out of council house building, and also, to assist those trying to buy their own houses, to bring down the interest rates for housing loans or for local authority loans, certainly to a special rate suitable to the urgency of the problem.
This is a subject about which Members who are not themselves involved


feel very deeply, because although it is brought to their notice so often they are able to do so little about it. I know of no more unhappy experience than to sit in my interview room and listen to a case which appears on the surface to be absolutely genuine—and which is genuine nine times out of ten—of a person, not necessarily clever or skilled, but a decent, ordinary man or woman, working in the vicinity, doing a very necessary job—like the postmen to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) referred— knowing perfectly well that I cannot even promise him anything.
In such cases I have to say, "I will do what I can, but I can promise you nothing; in fact, I do not think that you will get anything," and then take the matter up with my local authority or some other body, or wonder whether the Citizens' Advice Bureau might know of a house or a flat, or a couple of rooms. But of course it does not. The chances are that the person for whom I am inquiring has already been through that and another half dozen channels before approaching me.
The numbers may not appear to be very great, but as soon as we start to house some of these people more come pouring in. There can be no doubt but that creeping decontrol is the real cause of all this. As soon as houses become empty people come in from outside the borough—outside London itself, even—and buy the houses at prices which the local people cannot afford.

Mr. P. Williams: The hon. Member has referred to the need to do something further to help those who wish to buy houses. We all understand this problem. He has also referred, at the other end of the scale, to the need to provide houses through local authorities. Would he consider the argument far opening up a new section of the market by finding some way of allowing a private developer—with all the hesitations that he and his hon. Friends have on this matter—to provide houses and flats to let? If we can find some way of developing a new section of the market we may be able to go some way towards meeting the needs of those people on the housing lists.

Mr. Albu: I cannot see any new way or new incentive for a private builder to build houses for renting. It does not exist—

Mr. A. Lewis: I am obliged to my hon. Friend, who is my Member of Parliament for giving way to me. I have told the Minister that I know of a builder who wants to provide housing property to rent, but the Ministry have turned him down.

Mr. Albu: That is a subject which I do not want to pursue now as I know the Minister is anxious to reply to the debate and I am anxious to conclude my speech. I should be willing to investigate any means, but so far I cannot see any means of getting houses built for them people in the lower income groups which includes 30 per cent. or 40 per cent. of the population.

4.56 a.m.

Mr. B. T. Parkin: I expect that when this debate is over the Minister will go away and put his head in his hands and think back over the many debates which we have bad on the same subject and come to conclusion that there is really only one answer to the problem, which is to provide more accommodation. But I think that it is immensely valuable that that there should be an occasion such as this when hon. Members may discuss a narrow aspect of the housing problem with complete freedom, so that the House is able to appreciate the coordination between the different Departments which is necessary in order to create a proper picture of the problem to be tackled.
I am sure that we have to persuade a number of people in the country that the problem of homelessness in this day and generation is something relatively new. It is no longer a question of finding accommodation for the indigent poor who otherwise would go to the workhouse. It is no longer something which depends on material resources alone. It is a new kind of poverty which bears no relation to the circumstances of a previous generation or the situation in country districts where the decline in the standard of living may be due to the failure of the crops or the departure of industry which has produced the state of collapse.
What happens in this highly tense over-organised sort of society in which we live? There is a great instability in the sense that the physicist or the chemist would use the word. Suddenly and unexpectedly there is a collapse of a family. It is a collapse which would still occur were there no waiting lists for accommodation. Suddenly and unexpectedly people find themselves in difficulties through the failure of communications ox the co-ordination of the welfare services, and so on.
I remember the first case of homeless-ness which came to my notice. An old gentleman of 85 brought me a copy of one of the housing Acts which he had purchased and he referred to what was a common Section, which he construed as saying that if the local authority failed the Minister must intervene to look after him. He thought that it meant that the Minister could provide him with a home. It was an interesting case. I followed it up and tried to trace how co-ordination of welfare services failed. The Ministry of Health told me with some indignation that the first time the case was brought to its attention was when the old gentleman was found crying in the gutter. Of course he was crying in the gutter. He had just been evicted from his dwelling by bailiffs. It was all because of some failure to pay rent which he thought was being done through a banker's order. He was getting old. It was not a question of poverty. The stage had been reached when had been thrown out of his flat before anyone was able to offer him any assistance. The only assistance offered afterwards was that he was immediately certified as being of unsound mind. So would I be and so would the Minister be if we found ourselves suddenly in those circumstances. He had enough sense when he had finished his period of depression to climb out over the wall of the hospital and sleep rough for a fortnight and come back into circulation.
The Minister knows that I could give innumerable other examples of families who appear to have a good earning capacity suddenly being faced with such a calamity, which may arise merely from the closing of the dwelling in which they live, something to do with the local authority or the owner, something un-

connected with their personal circumstances.
This is an aspect which may need to be studied more and more carefully, this phenomenon of the apparent stability of life in an affluent society where there is no stability at all, where the ice is much thinner than one would think. It is important that the Minister should make it clear to the country tonight that he sympathises with that aspect of the problem.
In the week when two bishops have written to The Times asking very seriously for special consideration to be given to this very special problem the one local paper in my constituency of Paddington bears this headline, "Keep Out Homeless Families". One reason for my calling the Minister's attention to that is that it is a very powerful argument indeed against the Government's proposals for the alteration of London government. The paper contains these phrases:
Hoteliers in Norfolk Square fight L.C.C. scheme. Hoteliers in Norfolk Square, Paddington, are fighting an L.C.C. plan to take over eight houses in the Square for sixty-three homeless families. They claim that the move will lower the tone of the neighbourhood and hit their thriving tourist trade. Paddington Chamber of Commerce are backing the hotel owners in their fight … The houses, which are empty at present, will accommodate about 320 people.
The article says later that one of the hotel keepers—I will not give him any publicity by quoting his name, because he is a pompous ass—
who runs a tourist business from a hotel in the Square, told our reporter that he would have to move elsewhere if the L.C.C. refused to change their plans.
The sooner the better would be my comment.
'I cater for schoolchildren, and headmasters will not allow their pupils to come here if they discover that this is a centre for down and outs and homeless people'. he said.
He also had the effrontery to claim that the Governors of St. Mary's Hospital were worried at the effect that this would have upon the nurses' homes nearby.
This is a new low. I never heard a story in which the good Samaritan was given his 2d. back on the ground that it would lower the tone of the neighbourhood. This is based upon a complete misconception of the nature of the


problem. I give these people this publicity only because I would like the House to revive an idea which I put to the Minister's predecessor. Who do these sleazy little hotel keepers in their decaying squares, occupying what they have the pretentiousness to call hotels in old converted Victorian dwellings, think they are? It would be a very good thing indeed for London if the Minister could promote and encourage the building of three or four large new modern 300 to 500 bedroom hotels. If that were done, he would release whole streets of these mean little places, which exist economically only because their proprietors are either part-time brothel keepers or part-time tax cheats. These are the sort of people for whom the attraction of hotel keeping is that they do not have to record the whole of their takings. It would not be an economic proposition otherwise.
All round the great mainline railway stations there are among the reasonable and decent hotels a certain proportion of houses which pretend to be hotels, which are grossly under-occupied in the course of the year, and the building of some new modern hotels would release a great deal of property for redevelopment and reconversion to housing. That is one of the many things that the Minister of Housing might bear in mind. When he has done all the arithmetic, he will come to the same conclusion that whichever way one does the sum, the answer always works out the same. Whatever (plan one follows, there will not be enough accommodation on present reckoning for the demand for dwelling space in London.
Let us take existing accommodation. The Minister has got to start again. There is a sick body which the doctors have failed to cure. The fever recurs and the sickness gets worse. The medical and scientific approach would be to start again and make every conceivable test. Take nothing for granted. Throw back every single regulation and every plan that is in existence and try to get better use out of the existing houses.
For instance, are we sure that it is now right to try to enforce plumbing regulations which were devised a generation ago and for which there may be many cheaper and better alterna-

tives? Is it right to insist on the rule that as long as a building is left alone nobody will compel one to improve on it, but that if one wants to make an attachment to the pipe outside a house to form a fresh outlet from the bathroom or the toilet, the lot must be stripped down and replaced with L.C.C. standard steel piping from basement to room? This is a disincentive. There are in existence plastic and fibre pipes which are used in some parts of the country. We spend too much time trying to enforce the standards of a generation ago not only in housing but in so many aspects of our social work.
Is the Minister sure that the damp-proof regulations bear any relationship to what a do-it-yourself enthusiast could do with modern techniques which have been tried out? There are better things. There are polythene sheetings and all sorts of other devices. What about fire prevention regulations? Nylon has been invented. Do we need to have a gigantic criss-cross of staircases outside the back of these buildings? There are many improvements which would be cheaper and would make it possible to insist on a reasonable fire precaution code. There is the anomaly that if one does nothing to the house nobody will compel one to improve protection against fire, but once a person starts to make improvements to the house he walks into trouble and into these regulations.
Is it possible that there are one or two gigantic errors from well-intentioned sources? These evils do not all come from evil men. The blunderings in the growth of our society have come from the best intentions. The Minister knows the case—I have made it so many times—that the greatest barrier to improvement of what we conveniently call working class accommodation, the greatest force eroding into legitimate working-class accommodation today, is not the spiv or the speculator. It is the great trusts—the Church Commissioners, the Duke of Cornwall's Estate, the Armstrong-Jones' Greycoat or Greencoat people who have been in the Lobby tonight—and all those who, being directors of great corporations, set out on a plan which they believe is to improve but which is, in reality, a plan for a change of user.
I ask the Minister to go through the card index in his office, starting with "A"; "A" for Abercrombie. Let him set himself up as an anti-Abercrombie critic and let him ask if we were wrong in accepting Abercrombie. Was it a misconceived plan from the word "go"? Once a slum factory or a railway arch is designated for light industrial use, one cannot prevent it from being used for that, which means that we are preserving the opportunities for substandard industries which add to the layer of fat consisting of the semi-skilled and unskilled workers whom we cannot afford to house in London on their present unskilled work when we have such a demand for them in the essential services of the city. We must have accommodation for those who run the essential services, and we need them near to the centre of London.
At the same time, grandma should be able to live in the green belt area and have the young children go out to visit her instead of her daughter being ashamed to bring anybody home to see mum in her sub-standard accommodation at the centre. The party opposite knows that it should have got more velocity, and more turnover and movement into housing so that the older generation should be able, if it so wishes, to move near the pleasant green belts, making room for the young workers to live nearer the centre instead of paying high rents and commuting back and forth to work each day.
We have somehow got this thing all mixed up. We are all inclined to preach of the sanctity of the home, and security of tenure, but the Minister's party embarked on a process of destruction of that security by allowing de-control of rents. Yet are we not expecting this security of the home to achieve too many things at once? Do we not expect this home to provide everything, forgetting that if there was a reasonable chance of people finding a home, they would purchase, or re-purchase, and not stay in one place, would not under-occupy, and so on?
We need a turnover of accommodation. Is this, and all the other things which I have mentioned, the things at which the Government is hammering away? Are these the things which the Minister is going to adumbrate before he announces his own new programme?

Are any of these things going to be announced in the next Session of Parliament? The Minister has got to find a break-through with one or two new ideas and break right away from some of those obstructive obsessions and out-of-date opinions before he begins his work.
I hope that he will tackle the problem which I have put to him before, the problem of providing an opportunity for skilled apprenticeships in small units of industry. Are we to be strangled by Abercrombie? Why not have little workshops in our towns? Electricity has been invented. It is possible to take the power to the machine. We do not have to take industry to a place apart where it can have its power. Let us get rid of the notion that work is ugly, dirty and unhealthy. This is an old romantic reaction against the Industrial Revolution which should have departed a long time ago. There is no reason why young children should not have an opportunity of seeing old men at work, and respect them for it. But they have no such opportunity now.
These are all sociological points which one can raise only in a debate of this kind, and even at this hour of the morning. I know that others of my hon. Friends wish to speak before the Minister replies, but this is the only opportunity we have to take a broad view as well as the narrow view. We take the narrow point about homelessness. We find that we cannot touch that problem without considering also the education system, the welfare services in general, the problems of co-ordination and planning. We look at the mistakes which, probably, we have all made in planning.
I have the deeds of my house here. They are very interesting, but I have no time now to read them. I should have liked to read to the Minister a list of the things one is not allowed to do in my house. I must not boil horses. I must not make tallow candles. I must not even keep a bagnio in my house, a thing which some of the hoteliers in Norfolk Square could do as recently as ten years ago.
One can have compulsive planning only if one owns the land. It may be that it is in the womb of destiny for the Conservative Party to find a device for


reviving the Queen's Prerogative, because it has never been admitted yet that the land has passed out of the ownership of the Monarch in law. The freeholder of land is now so beset by rules, restrictions, planning permissions and so on that it is no longer sense to pretend that the independent freeholder is free. He could be free to use the land for the purpose for which he was originally granted it and then have to come back for further permission if there was to be a change of user. One might be able to do a trick of nationalisation there without compensation and without legislation. Only if that is tackled shall we ever gat to the nub of the problem of development.

5.18 a.m.

Mr. Albert Evans: The Minister will not be able to say that this debate was devoid of ideas. He has just had some from my hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North (Mr. Parkin), and he has had many more from hon. Members on both sides of the House during our discussions. I am sure that he will consider them very carefully as he journeys away from the House during the Recess. My hope is that these ideas will stimulate the Minister to take action. It is not ideas we want now so much as vigorous action from a vigorous Minister. The right hon. Gentleman knows most of the facts and most of the things which might be done. What he must do now is stir up his courage and tackle the problem of the homeless.
We have debated this matter now for six hours. It is right that Parliament should devote time, even during the night, to the plight of about 800 families. Because those people are without homes. Parliament is concerned, and Parliament must tell the Minister what it expects him to do. My reaction to the problem is not to try to examine the matter in detail, not to find ways and means of doing this or that, but to say, with the Bishop of Southwark and the Bishop of London whose words I read in yesterday's Times, that this is a scandal which must be ended.
We tend to spend too much time in discussing knowledgeably all the details of urban redevelopment, housing, how we can modernise the centres of our

cities and how to adjust ourselves to modern living. We spend far too much time discussing the long-term considerations and the theory of good living. In the matter of homelessness, we fail to take enough practical action.
This is not a big problem. It concerns 800 homeless families. Is that beyond the wit of the Minister and his advisers? Is it beyond the capacity of the local authorities and their specialists and beyond the capacity of Parliament to tackle the small problem of finding homes for 800 families? Once the will was there—that is the missing factor— I should have thought it a problem which could be solved without too much delay and without too great difficulty.
These people are not the ne'er-do-wells, the people prone to poverty, the hopeless people whom we cannot help. They are largely decent families and Londoners. Young married couples, I understand, with children are the prevailing sample to be found among the homeless in London today. It is a failure of all of us that this should occur. The Minister goes round making speeches to town planners, his chief advisers address local authorities and send circulars, aldermen and councillors can debate these matters, for six hours tonight Parliament discusses them, but after all the discussion and effort devoted by considerable numbers of well-informed and able persons, in this year of 1960 800 London families lack a home in which to live and bring up their children.
It is a failure for all of us, a failure of all those who claim to be experts in housing and urban living. It indicates the failure of their efforts that 800 families should be without homes. It is a reproof to all of us and I hope that the worthy Bishops who addressed themselves to the editor of The Times will receive a response from the Minister. They conclude their letter by saying:
We believe that a strong lead from the Government to remove the present scandal would meet with wide support.
I hope that in that spirit, the time for discussion and theorising is past and the time for vigorous action through the local authorities is now with us, so that we can remove this blot of having good, decent London families without a home in which to bring up their children.
My hon. Friend the Member for Paddington, North was quite right when he said that the problem of homelessness in London was something new. It did not exist before the war. Nothing of the kind happened. As the war ended, we had a sizeable problem of homelessness due to destruction, the return of evacuees and men returning from war service. In 1945 and following years, we had a considerable problem of homelessness. We know that at that time the Government were forced to act and rest centres had to be established, financed entirely from the Exchequer.
That phase of homelessness was the obvious aftermath of the war. We got over it and by 1953 the Government were able to decide to close the rest centres. The problem of homelessness was, as we then believed, solved. In the last three or four years this problem has come back to us. We thought that with our housing progress we had got on top of and solved the problem. We were told by the authors of the Rent Act that the problem was as good as solved. The present Minister of Health made a famous statement that supply was nearly equal to demand. Looking back, we can see how false those notions were and how his intellectual pride carried him into the greatest error which caused great misery to many people. Suddenly, during the last three years the problem has recurred and we have increasing numbers of homeless in London. They are without shelter, no place to live, homeless.
It is as well to ask ourselves why after the country had solved the problem in the immediate aftermath of war and following considerable housing progress, this problem should now recur. My examination of the matter leads me to the conclusion that there are two reasons. First there is the Rent Act. I shall not labour the point, but I believe that the Rent Act has caused an upsurge in the number of people without homes. The other reason is the Government's change of policy from the effort to build considerable numbers of council houses and to switch the efforts of local authorities in the direction of slum clearance. That change of Government policy, coupled with the operation of the

Rent Act, has brought the recurrence of homelessness in London.
The Minister ought to consider whether the policy of driving ahead with slum clearance in London is not causing for him considerable problems, one of which is homelessness. I take the view that until we have a larger number of houses in London we cannot drive ahead with slum clearance. The position is difficult in other parts of the country, but in London we have not a sufficient supply of rentable accommodation at reasonable rents to enable us to drive ahead with slum clearance. I state that as my view and I shall not argue it because time is short, but I hope that the Minister will consider whether we ought to drive ahead with slum clearance in London while we have not that rentable property, for that would reduce the amount of accommodation.
London has a special problem because of its position and its attraction. Let the Minister remember that if this great city is to tick over and its menial tasks are to be done, we must provide in the central area rentable accommodation at reasonable rents for the workers who have to do the menial tasks which London demands.

5.30 a.m.

Mr. G. W. Reynolds: Time is flying on, but I think those of us who have been taking part and waiting to take part in the debate have been fortunate in one thing—that we have not had to give way even for a minute of our time to any representative of the Liberal Party, because not one of them has been here the whole time, and now my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham, North (Mr. A. Lewis) is the only Member on the Liberal bench and taking up a considerable part of it.
There were a number of points which I wanted to make, but, as has been said, time is short now, and so I shall take the opportunity in the last few moments to make just one or two isolated points, which I should like the Minister to consider, during the Recess, perhaps, if he is not able to give a reply to me about them now.
I draw his attention to the fact that we have had earlier debates on this subject, and, no doubt, he has been going


through them. There was one on 26th July, 1960, and another on 6th November, 1961. Looking back on the debate on 6th November, 1961, one sees that the then Minister informed us of quite a number of things which he was looking at and having investigations made into at that time. He referred, for example, to the concept of regional planning and said his Department was then making an investigation into the problem in the south-east of the country, the Midlands, Tyneside and south-east Lancashire. That is now some eight months ago, and I think the time has come when the Minister should be able to give us some idea of the results of those studies or to say how far the Department has proceeded with them.
We were also told in that debate that it was the Government's policy to bring forward more land for development both inside and outside urban areas. I wonder if we can be given any information about this, how the policy is proceeding, how much more land has been brought forward for development for residential purposes, presumably by negotiation and adjustment of existing development plans of the boroughs and counties.
Reference was made in that debate by the then Minister, and has been made by other Members in this debate, to the question of the utilisation of British Transport Commission land. There is a great amount of railway land which a number of Metropolitan boroughs and other urban authorities have in their areas, and this is obviously a matter in which some general agreement has to be entered into by the Minister on behalf of all the local authorities with the British Transport Commission. I think it would be unwise if not impossible for each individual local authority to try to come to some separate arrangement with the Commission in regard to the different bits of railway land within each local authority's boundaries. I hope the Minister will be able to give us some indication of the general arrangement he may be able to come to with the Commission so that individual local authorities can apply that general agreement to railway land in co-operation with the Commission in their own areas.
The then Minister also informed us that his Department's policy on overspill was being reassessed. I wonder whether we can be informed how far this reassessment has got, what the present position is, how much longer we must wait for the various studies to proceed which were announced last November.
The problem in my constituency I have mentioned before, but I take this opportunity to refer to one particular matter which affects the Borough of Islington. There is at the present moment the last available piece of land which it is possible to develop for housing purposes in the borough, a site of some 30 acres known as the Caledonian Market, which contains large slaughterhouses and is owned by the City of London Corporation. We have discussed it in some detail on an earlier occasion, and I understand the latest proposal is that we shall be receiving in due course legislation by the City Corporation to enable it in certain circumstances to carry on the use of the land for slaughterhouse purposes till 1967 when that land will become available for development for educational and housing purposes. I should like the Minister during the Recess to make some sort of arrangement whereby that land will become available for housing considerably before 1967. He knows as well as we all know that the position in London is urgent, and here are 30 acres of which at least half, if I remember rightly, is to be made available for housing for Islington and the City Corporation and the London County Council. I sincerely hope the Minister will be able to go into the matter with all interested bodies and make sure the land becomes available long before 1967, though I realise how fatal to schemes of this nature is the proposed creation of new local authorities and that this may suffer to a certain extent, along with other schemes because of reorganisation.
If it is not possible to commit whatever the new top-tier structure in London local government is to be, my view is that facilities should be provided for Islington Borough Council to purchase and develop such part of the site as will be available for residential purposes. We must not allow the local government reorganisation to slow down any housing operation which can be carried out. I


hope that the Minister will look at the problem.
I now refer to some of the difficulties which local authorities are facing at present The main difficulty for the majority of local authorities is that, even if they have land, they have to face the very high interest rates deliberately brought about by Government policy. The Government have forced local authorities away from the Public Works Loan Board to borrow money on the open market at whatever rate of interest they can obtain. That is Government policy which I have attacked in the past and would do again tonight but for the fact that time is short.
But rumours have been building up over the last two years and are coming to a head again to the effect that local authorities, having been forced on to the free market, will now have restrictions imposed on them as to the way in which they can utilise it. I hope the Minister will deny that that is to happen, but for a long time there have been rumours, and they are becoming intensified, that restrictions are to be placed on the amount of short-term money which individual local authorities will be allowed to hold
In certain circumstances it is advantageous for a local authority not to enter into long-tern borrowing for housing purposes—by "long-term" I mean anything from 365 days to 10, 15, 20 or 30 years—but to borrow money for 7 days, 28 days, or up to 364 days. Some local authorities have substantial amounts of money borrowed in this way. But I think they are involved in certain risks. These are risks which the Minister must trust the local authority itself to assess and take. When local authorities are forced on to the market, they must be allowed completely free use of it and trusted to make proper use of it. It would be completely improper if, having bean forced on to the free market, they were to have some of the freedom taken away because of the activities of a very small minority of local authorities in abusing short-term borrowing facilities might be causing the Minister or the Government a certain amount of worry. I hope we may have an assurance from the Minister that he has no intention at present of restricting access to the market by local authorities which wish to to obtain the capital which they must have for housing development.
It has been stated that the London County Council, in common with a large number of other authorities, is purchasing empty property, and also property which is occupied, in an attempt to solve some aspects of the housing problem by providing additional units of accommodation. I would emphasise that this is an exceedingly expensive job for a local authority to embark upon in large measure. If a local authority purchases a house, improves it and then lets it at a rent 2⅓ times the gross value as laid down in the Rent Act, 1957, it is almost certain that it will have a deficit on the rates of between £50 and £90 a year in covering the outgoings on the house.
The same applies to new building. Multi-storeyed flats built on land which the local authority has had to purchase —it may have had old houses, factories, workshops or other property on it—and redeveloped as part of a redevelopment scheme—most London local authorities are having to do this rather than develop straightforward new building on virgin land—will inevitably cost it about £5,000 for each flat. The Minister looks a little surprised, but that is what it is at present costing Acton Borough Council, of which I am a member, for every flat in a redevelopment scheme. There is a terrific amount of multi-storeyed building nowadays as part of redevelopment schemes.
Here again charging rents at 2⅓ times the gross value means that the ratepayers have to find about £90 a year— in some cases even more—in order to balance the account of every flat provided by the local authority, and this builds up considerable deficits.

Sir K. Joseph: Is the hon. Member making full allowance for the expensive sites subsidy?

Mr. Reynolds: I am making allowance for every subsidy we can squeeze out of the right hon. Gentleman's Ministry. The local authorities try to get all they can, as he doubtless knows.
These deficits make considerable gaps in the balance of the housing revenue accounts of local authorities which carry on building at the present high interest rates.
One of the difficulties facing a local authority is how to finance the building of houses and flats. It is usually at least


two years from the purchase of the site before the first penny is drawn in rent for the property built on it. Very often the period is considerably longer. A local authority which is building about 200 flats a year is having to pay out at least £10,000 to £12,000 a year by way of debt charge on land and buildings under construction. The right hon. Gentleman shrugs his shoulders, but this forms a deficit on the housing revenue account. Then Conservative members of local authorities try to make out that this is in fact a subsidy to existing council house tenants. It is nothing of the sort.
It is the sort of charge which a development company would capitalise. But a local authority cannot do that. The Minister should look at this aspect to see whether a charge of this nature — an unremunerative debt charge—can be placed to the planning or other account so that it does not give a false picture of tenants receiving large subsidies. Perhaps, in major redevelopment schemes, the local authorities could capitalise this type of expenditure rather than carry it as a deficit.
The management of housing lists and the choosing of future tenants also is charged to the housing revenue account, and this can reach to several thousands of pounds a year. It has nothing to do with existing tenants, but the money has to be spent in keeping the list up to date. Yet some Conservative members of local authorities try to make out that this, too, is of benefit to existing tenants in their general attacks on subsidies.
We are told that the solution may be found in laying down higher densities for the Greater London area. This may indeed provide part of the solution, but I am convinced, as are the rest of my hon. Friends, that London's problems cannot be solved within the area itself but only by overspill to areas considerably away from it.
I hear a rumour that some of the existing new towns round London are shortly to be told that their planned population is to be increased by at least 50 per cent. I hope that rumour is unfounded. It would be a terrible mistake suddenly to extend by 50 per cent. a new town like Harlow, planned for a certain population with a town centre designed to cope with a population that size. It

might be possible to extend the planned population up to 10 or 15 per cent. but it would ruin the concept of such towns if such a large figure as 50 per cent. were laid down. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman can deny this rumour.
I agree with the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mr. G. Johnson Smith) that there should be regional development corporations. It is a great shame that the experienced and skilled people employed by the development corporations are being dispersed. If these teams could be kept together and the country divided into regions, with regional development corporations responsible for building new towns, or new cities, within those regions, while at the same time being responsible for the expansion of existing towns under town expansion schemes, and also being able to do other building work for local authorities in their areas, this would go a long way towards solving some of the problems with which we are faced.
I commend again the suggestion put forward by the Bow Group about eighteen months ago, that the Government should embark on building one or two new cities, as distinct from new towns. I hope that such cities will be at least 100 miles from London because one mistake that we made was in building the new towns too close to London. When the Conservative Party took office and wanted to build 300,000 houses a year, it got the new town development corporations to build houses in advance of industrial needs, and in the end a large number of people returned to London to work because there were no jobs in the new towns. We now have the position that the children of many of the families who moved out to the new towns have to travel to and from London because there is not a wide diversity of jobs in the new towns. I hope, therefore, that if the Government decide to build new cities they will site them at least 100 miles from London, either in the West Country, or in East Anglia.
I end by stressing the hope that if we are able to put these new cities 100 miles from London Dr. Beeching will not by then have withdrawn the railway facilities which these new cities will require if they are to cope with some of the problems facing the Greater London area.

5.46 a.m.

Mr. Michael Stewart: It is now more than six hours since this debate was begun with the powerful and moving speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish). My hon. Friend drew our attention at the outset to the size of the problem. In January of this year 2,800 homeless people were in the care of the London County Council. By July this figure had risen to over 4,000.
But more serious than those figures is the realisation which comes to us as we read the London County Council's special report on the matter, and, as has been emphasised in this debate, that, short of important changes of policy this problem will continue, and will continue to grow, because what emerges both from the L.C.C. report and from the arguments that we have heard in this debate is that London's problem of homeless families is a symptom of something seriously wrong with our national policy, and that many of the measures which might be taken to deal with the existing homeless will get us nowhere because the basic causes of the problem will continue to exist.
In an attempt to study those causes, I think that we might begin by looking at this special report. It lists, to begin with, certain immediate and superficial causes. It can be said that this family was rendered homeless because the landlord wanted the accommodation in which it was living. This is simple enough to understand. The landlord thought that he could put it to more profitable use, and the decontrol provisions of the Rent Act enable him to turn out the tenants. It can be said that that family was rendered homeless as a result of domestic friction, which usually means that the parents in law could no longer put up with an intolerably overcrowded home. Or it can be said that a third family has been rendered homeless because it was falling into arrears with the rent, a cause which is becoming more common as rents rise.
But although we can go through one homeless family after another, listing each cause why it became homeless, we then have to remember that these causes have always operated more or less in great cities, and perhaps particularly in the capital city. The real question that

we have to ask today is: when all these families are rendered homeless for this, that or any other reason, why is it that so many continue to be quite incapable of finding anywhere else to go? That is the problem that we have to solve, and I believe that the answer lies basically in two causes.
The first is the pressure of employment into south-east England, and the result of that on the demand for accommodation in London, and the second is the Rent Act. They operate together, and it is of vital importance that we should see how the process works. The actual population of the County of London has been diminishing, but we must observe—and this point was admirably made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay)—what has been happening to the demand for accommodation in London. The pressure of employment into south-east England has always been pushing up that demand. If we draw a circle with a 40-mile radius round Charing Cross, within it there has come to birth half the total amount of new employment that has been brought into existence in this country in the last ten years. That means that a great many people have been drawn to this area.
Many of those people will be wealthier than the previous inhabitants of the County of London; many of them—the better-off employees of firms coming to the South-East—will want to live in the County of London, possibly near the centre, with all the amenities of the capital. With their incomes they become a potential demand for accommodation in that county.
While rent control remained there was some barrier against this movement, but once it became the rule that when a tenancy became vacant the landlord could let it for whatever he could get the doors were opened to this potential influx of wealthier tenants. It is true that if we had maintained rent control in London some at least of the excess drive of employment into south-east England would have been halted. However, that has not happened, and we now have an almost insatiable demand, backed up by considerable incomes, for accommodation in the county. Owing to the Rent Act the people who have the


money to exercise that demand can increasingly get what they want—with 20,000 tenancies passing out of control every year.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Clapham (Dr. Glyn) is not here, because he was doubtful whether the Rent Act was responsible. I hope that if he had been here he would have been following my argument. It will be noticed that the effect of the Rent Act has been to make it easier for fairly well-off people to get accommodation in the county, and perhaps live in rather more accommodation than previously, but it has been made progressively more difficult for people with below-average incomes to get themselves a decent home there. That is inescapable.
It is also interesting to notice that when the Rent Act was being pushed through the House we were assured that it would be a positive benefit and would help to solve or at least to alleviate the housing problem in London. We have been debating this subject for over six hours, and nobody has ventured to put that argument forward. The most that has been argued for the Rent Act is that it has not made the problem worse. Nobody has ventured to suggest that it has done anything that has been claimed for it, and the claim that it has not made the problem worse cannot be sustained.
This comes out through the special report of the London County Council which indicates the shrinking amount of accommodation available for rent, particularly in the London area, for people who have less than the average income and who have been so improvident as to have both a less than average income and a number of children. But we have to have people of that kind. It may be very tiresome for the people who framed the Rent Act and who think of the housing problem in terms of supply and demand. It is tiresome to find that the less well paid working classes, which include some important workers—some of the hospital staff, postmen and dustmen—have families and cannot be put into boxes at night but require houses to live in.
We are faced with that fact. What is the answer? It is I believe that if we have in the capital city what is called

an affluent society and a number of wealthy people trying to live in it, the housing problem cannot be left to solve itself in terms of supply and demand, otherwise the position for the less well paid worker will become intolerable. The man who empties my dustbin in Kensington cannot be expected to follow the advice of the last Minister of Housing but one and move out into some area where the rent will not be so high. He and a great many other workers must live nearby which means that we have to help them in some way over the rent, either by the provision of more municipal dwellings or an effective system of rent control.
I wonder whether the Minister realises this situation and the effect of the combination of a great demand for housing in London and controlled rents on human relationships between landlord and tenant. Over and over again we find a situation where the landlord of the property lives in one part of the house and a controlled tenant in another. In the eyes of the landlord the tenant is an obstacle between him and the unearned capital gain which he could gain by letting the tenancy for four or five times the present controlled rent. That sometimes result in ceaseless cajoling of the tenant to get out. It has been suggested that the county council should treat the homeless as a housing and not as a welfare problem and that they should allocate them houses on the ordinary housing list. I wonder whether it is realised that landlords are offering tenants £50 and £100 to allow themselves to be evicted because of the advantage of a vacant property to the landlord. Once it was known that eviction would lead to a council house the number of evictions would treble overnight. So the problem cannot be handled in that fashion. Sometimes it is not only cajoling. Sometimes there is persistent persecution of the tenant by the landlord. I will not pursue that line of argument further. We are not supposed to advocate legislation and there is only one thing which I could advise the right hon. Gentleman to do with the Rent Act. There is, however, one thing which he could do which would not require legislation. We are to have a National Incomes Commission and workers who make salary or wage claims can be summoned before that Commission. Cannot


we have people with other forms of income brought before it? Will it be possible for the question whether landlords are getting too much of the national cake to be considered by the Commission? If not, it will be a precious piece of humbug.
There is, therefore, the immediate Rent Act irritation and the basic evil of the uncontrolled pressure of employment on the south-east of England. The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mr. G. Johnson Smith), whose absence we all so regret at this moment, said that he felt that it was part of the national prosperity that there should have been this flow of employment to south-east England. Better that we should have a boom in employment than the dead weight of unemployment of the 1930s, but it ought not to pass human wit for us to be capable of ensuring that our industries and employment expand with rather more balance without creating quite so many social difficulties on the way.
There is the problem. What can be said about remedies for it? I want to dismiss a couple of quack remedies which it has been fashionable to advance in the correspondence columns of some newspapers but which I am glad have not been advanced in the debate tonight. One quack remedy advanced was to say, "If only the London County Council would turn out of its council dwellings some of the affluent tenants with their cars, jewellery and silver teapots, there would be plenty of room for the people who really need that accommodation". I am glad that nobody has advanced that argument tonight. Indeed, it is a thoroughly unsubstantial argument and a dangerous one, because it diverts our attention from possible serious remedies to the problem.
It is a false and quack remedy, for this reason. How well off must a council tenant be in these days before one can fairly say to him, "You are well enough off to look after yourself for housing. Out you go"? May I tell the House a little of my personal experience? When I was a boy we were not well off. We lived in a council house. When I became a breadwinner and we were a little better off, we were able to move elsewhere. We did so for a very natural reason. We wanted somewhere a little

larger and with a larger garden and we could afford it. But this was in the early 1930s, with the prices for houses and rent levels existing then. Neither we nor anyone placed as we were could do that today.
What sort of income must a man have for him to be told, "You can buy your own house"? A young couple came to see me as recently as last Friday. Between them they had an income of £20 a week, but £6 was earned by the wife. The man's basic wage was £12, but he generally reckoned with overtime he brought in £14. The building societies that he had tried looked at his basic wage and would not accept him for a mortgage. If one goes running round the council flats for people to whom it can be fairly said, "Out you go into this jungle of uncontrolled rents and rising house prices. Fend for yourselves", one will not find enough to make it worth the bother of looking. Let us hope that we shall hear no more of that quack remedy.
The other quack remedy was to suggest that there is a great deal of under-occupancy in L.C.C. flats and that, if only all the people who have too much room were moved out into smaller flats, the problem could be solved. There are 200,000 families in L.C.C. dwellings. Seventeen thousand of them—8½ per cent.—are reckoned to have more rooms than they need, to be in a state of over-occupation. That is not a very large proportion, Remembering that as many as 8,000 transfers are made every year, it is clear that this problem is not being neglected. One cannot say to a family, "One of your grown-up children married last year and therefore you have a spare room. You are under-occupying the premises. We have found at the other end of London a place which will just fit you for size, so out you go". One cannot treat human beings in that manner. One has to consider not only whether there is a smaller place, but whether it is in a neighbourhood that makes it reasonable to ask these people to go. If it is, and if one asks them sensibly, they will probably go anyhow. I am glad also that we have heard nothing of that quack remedy.
What can be done? There are some measures which the London County Council has already diligently been


taking. It has seen to it by way of immediate ambulance measures that there is literally sufficient accommodation to cope with this alarming rising tide of homeless. It has got to work on the mobile housing programme. It has got to work on the acquisition of various empty properties. It has taken some of its older housing property which it had intended to modernise and used it instead for the accommodation of the homeless. These are all reasonable measures to take to deal with the immediate situation. But they are not, for the reasons I suggested earlier, a real answer to the problem as a whole, because the answer to that lies outside the sole power of a local authority.
In that I must take issue with what was said by the last Minister of Housing. Writing to the Secretary of the London Labour Party on 21st May this year, he said:
I share the concern of your members"—
that is the members of the London Labour Party—
about this urgent and human problem of London's homeless families, and from the very outset I have made it plain that immediate steps should be taken to help them. These steps are all within the power, responsibility and capacity of the London County Council.
When I drew attention to that in the House the other day the right hon. Gentleman was doubtful whether his predecessor had in fact expressed that view. Well, there it is, and it is a wholly false view.

Mr. A. Lewis: Where is the right hon. Gentleman? He has not been present during the debate.

Mr. Stewart: Where are the snows of yesteryear? Why is this view that the London County Council can solve the whole thing by its own efforts a false view? Let us take one of the steps which are clearly necessary, and that is large-scale acquisition of property. The L.C.C. Special Report suggests that the L.C.C. might get busy and set to work acquiring all the property which it knows it will have to acquire for redevelopment purposes in the next twenty years. Frankly, that is an impossibly ambitious programme. In the first place, one does not know as far ahead as twenty years. One does know about as far ahead as 1972—ten years ahead. It could be said

that the London County Council should set to work to acquire now the property that it knows it will need to acquire by 1972. But I think it must be admitted— and the L.C.C. Special Report admits— that that could not be done by a local authority without some form of special financial help from the Government. Are the Government prepared in any way to help finance action of that kind?
The Report suggested a particular source of finance for the help of the local authority, a tax on developers and property owners who have benefited either from planning restrictions or the housing shortage. That would be a bit difficult to administer but, one way or another, if this programme of advance acquisition of property on any considerable scale is to be carried through, there has got to be special help from the Government to the local authority.
Further, for the acquisition of property even on a modest scale, I am sure we must have the speeding up of the procedure for acquisition. We have been told by the right hon. Gentleman's predecessors that if local authorities see their citizens in danger of eviction by avaricious landlords they can set in motion the machinery of purchase, and if necessary compulsory purchase. Let him look at the answer which had to be given a few days ago to my hon. Friend the Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) about the length of time that some of these proposals for compulsory purchase have been under consideration. I do not blame the Minister because, quite simply, the procedure is not fast enough to deal with this problem, but, farther than that and without asking for legislation, I cannot go. I leave the thought with the Minister.
One other point on the question of acquisition is that if it is really the Government's view that there is a danger of homelessness and eviction, will he make it quite clear to Conservative groups on metropolitan borough councils that acquisition is the answer? The Conservative group on my own borough council at Fulham tried to win the last election with a programme against compulsory purchase and, not surprisingly, emerged from that election with fewer seats.
If this problem is ever to be finally solved, then more houses will have to be built in the


County of London and elsewhere. I agree that it is a difficult matter to decide how far one can deal with this by building more in the County of London itself, and I accept that there axe parts of the County of London where, without damage, we could accept higher densities. Yet, if we do that and no more and leave pressure of employment in south-eastern England to increase, then in five years' time we shall have to increase them again. So, I am rather chary of seeking the remedy too much along those lines.
Sooner or later, the population of Greater London will have to be got away to new towns. Building more is not merely a question of building more in London. That is only part of the whole problem of the need for building more throughout the country. Over and over again, we on this side of the House have explained what are the necessities if that result is to be achieved, and now the Minister's own hon. Friends are beginning to tell him the same thing. We on this side have told the Government often enough that they have got to take housing seriously, and if they do take it seriously they will have to give a preferential rate of interest to local authorities for their housing purposes. Now, we discover that the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South has discovered it as well. If things go on like this, I can foresee us being told in a years' time that a thoughtful group of Young Conservatives invented the idea in the first place.
To sum up. It means a new policy in interest rates, some control of land prices, and a vigorous policy of encouraging new towns and new cities. I come back to the point at which I started, to say that right at the bottom of everything lies the lack of plan for the distribution of industry and commerce, and that this tragic problem of the London homeless is only one symptom of faults in a society which has been able to produce a greater total of wealth but which has not yet grasped how to organise that wealth for social benefit and for happiness.

6.15 a.m.

The Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs (Sir Keith Joseph): We have had a sober debate on an extremely

serious subject. Although I cannot possibly deal with all the questions and suggestions which have been put from both sides of the House, I shall study them all. I pay tribute to the sincere speeches which have been made. We have had thoughtful speeches from my hon. Friends the Member for Crosby (Mr. Graham Page), the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras, South (Mr. G. Johnson Smith) and the Member for Clapham (Dr. Alan Glyn), as well as useful interventions from others of my hon. Friends.
The hon. Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish) started off with a forceful speech. Although I cannot pick out all The speeches made from the benches opposite, I wish particularly to say how much I relished and learned from the very sincere speech of the hon. Member for Islington, South-West (Mr. A. Evans) and the anxious and responsible speech of the hon. Lady the Member for Peckham (Mrs. Corbet). I intend the hon. Lady a compliment when I use those adjectives, because I know that she boars a considerable responsibility in this matter through the work on the other side of the river.
I was glad to hear the constructive speech of the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Albu). From the hon. Member for Paddinigton, North (Mr. Parkin) we had a speech composed in part of dreams which I share with him but also of a good deal of mud-slinging, which I do not share. I have heard all the speeches except that of the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) to whom I apologise. I am grateful to hon. Members for their individual forbearance which has enabled me, I hope, to catch the aeroplane to visit the slums of the North-East, which I am pledged to do today and tomorrow.
As I cannot deal with all the subjects which have been raised, I hope the House will excuse me if I deal with the main theme of the debate as it has presented itself in hon. Members' speeches. We must accept, as the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) has said, that in all capital cities there is the fiercest competition for space. I believe that, subject to one big condition, the market is the right mechanism for dealing with the situation where there is more demand than supply. But there is


a big condition, that there shall be proper provision for those people who cannot, however they organise their affairs, afford the rate of the market.
I must flatly say at the beginning of this winding-up speech, so as to condition all that I say hereafter, that there is just not sufficient of such provision, that is, low cost housing, in the County of London at present. Nothing I say is meant in any way to qualify Chat fact. Nevertheless, I want to make abundantly plain to hon. Members on both sides of the House that this is not a problem which may be solved by humanity alone, nor by humanity plus energy. I stand out as sturdily as I can for the humanity and the integrity of my night hon. Friend who is now the Home Secretary, under whom I was proud to serve for two years at the Ministry where I now am.
Where there is an absolute shortage of dwellings, in the short term some people can be helped only at the expense of others. As the hon. Lady the Member for Peckham knows only too well, if we are not careful we shall only help one lot of people in trouble at the expense of creating quite another lot of people in trouble. I am speaking only of the short term here, of course. In the middle and long team, much can be done to put an end to this miserable and wretched procession of people, as the hon. Lady put it, falling off the edge into real homelessness.
The hon. Member for Paddington, North asked me to accept, as I frankly do, that relatively prosperous though the majority of our people are and relatively extremely well housed though the majority of our people are, there is a minority suffering intensely through housing need. I do not for a moment wish to disguise this. What makes the whole situation so tragic is the contrast between the better-than-ever-before welfare and conditions of most of our fellow citizens and the plight in which this minority finds itself.
I come now to what has been the most important theme of the debate. It has emerged from several speeches, but it was most clearly brought out by the right hon. Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) in what, if I may say so, I thought was a most interesting and

valuable speech. I shall study it carefully. It was backed up by several of my hon. Friends and by hon. Members opposite. The right hon. Gentleman asked, in brief, whether the demand for housing space in London is so aggravated by the increasing employment in London that the London County Council and the other authorities, like Sisyphus, can never get the stone to the top of the hill.
This is a study that I am urgently pursuing. As the hon. Lady the Member for Peckham knows, I have asked the London County Council to give me as much further information as possible on the inter-relation of employment and housing need. Obviously, we realise the inter-relation between traffic congestion and employment in London, but what is the connection between employment and housing need? I am grateful to the hon. Lady for saying, as is true, that I need time to study the problem and the evidence that she and her colleagues will send me.
On the answer to the theme introduced by the right hon. Member for Battersea, North depends whether the problem is within the grasp of the L.C.C. and the other Metropolitan authorities. I accept that if it is proved that there is this inter-relation, the task is far larger than the L.C.C. and the other authorities can manage, and comes within the scope of the Government themselves. Subject to that, however, in the short term and, indeed, in the middle term the job is primarily for the London County Council. I add, of course, that it will be my job to help the council wherever I can, wherever it is necessary and wherever I can act without prejudice to general housing progress.
None of us needs to emphasise that London is a major magnet, and whenever there is a magnet, however many counter-magnets are set up, we have to expect the greatest pressure. It is true that people pour in to work in increasing numbers from all over the country, although at a far lesser rate than they would pour in were it not for the planning policies of the Government. Yet —and this is the paradox—in the last ten years, thanks to the London County Council and the national plan within which the council is working, the


housing condition of Londoners as a whole has improved strikingly.
Fifteen thousand people more than have come to London have left the County of London each year, many of them voluntarily, seeking their homes outside, many of them going to out-county estates of the London County Council until they were filled up and many of them going more than ever to expanded and new towns. So that the resident population of London has fallen in net terms by 150,000 over the last ten years after allowing for all the people who have come in.

Mr. Jay: When the right hoe. Gentleman says that 15,000 people a year have left London, he means, does he not, that the population has fallen by 15,000 a year?

Sir K. Joseph: Yes; I am obliged. The remaining population, however, has formed almost as many households as were here ten years ago. As we all know, owing to greater average prosperity, for every 100 people there are more households today than there were five or ten years ago. So that in terms of households, we have vary nearly as many as ten years ago—it is 1 per cent. less—although in terms of population, we have 150,000 people fewer.
Yet each year 12,000 new houses have been built in the County of London after allowing for all demolitions and clearances due to slum clearance, road widening, school programmes or any other reason. In addition to those 12,000 new houses, the London County Council has disposed on average of about 4,000 re-lets each year. So each year there have been 15,000 fewer people residing in the County of London and—in a sense— 16,000 more homes. And yet we all know that the position is grossly unsatisfactory.
To sum up this part of what I want to say, the gap between dwellings and households, which should be at least 2 per cent. in favour of dwellings so as to allow for movement, was a minus of 300,000 ten years ago and is now a minus of 165,000. That is the measure of the task that still lies ahead, although it is also a measure of what the London County Council, within the Government plan, has already achieved. I pay

tribute to the London County Council and all concerned for their achievement.
The pressure is still enormous, but why is it that when the population has been falling and the number of homes has been rising and the numbers of homeless have not hitherto made the headlines, now they are rising in numbers and reaching into the consciousness of the whole population as well as to this House? The fact is that there was and there must have been very much more crowding and very much less space per family before the Rent Act simply because there were more people in fewer homes, but—this has been implied by several speakers although they have not said it in so many words— the overcrowded population was frozen into its position and it may be more tolerable to be frozen into small space than to be unfrozen with more space.
Many hon. Members have proved what we all know, and have stated what is in the Report, that the Rent Act is part of the present situation, but the fact is that the block decontrol and creeping decontrol mean that there has been more mobility. That increase of mobility has made more space for very large numbers of families who are very much better off because of it, but the very velocity of circulation of people seeking new and better homes has affected those least able to compete in this increasingly prosperous society. That is what the Report says and what we all know, and no one would deny it. There are more dwellings, fewer residents, but more competition for the space. The very prosperity of London makes it hard for the least well off to compete successfully.
I was sorry that the hon. Member for Paddington, North did not produce a comment he made so effectively a couple of debates ago when he spoke of mechanising those manual jobs so that those who do them, the least well-off at present, can command higher pay which would help them to compete in those conditions.
I suggest that it would be no solution to the problem today to go back to a freeze. That would simply punish another lot of people. We cannot freeze the population of a great city and expect it to grow increasingly prosperous.
So I come to what, in my view and the view of the Government, can be done. I have said that I accept for the Government the task of studying the implications of increasing employment on housing. That is not the problem of the L.C.C. except to prove the implications. Subject to that, in the short term the first recourse must be to the L.C.C. Of course, the numbers of homeless are larger than they have been in the past, but not in relation to the L.C.C. I accept that the L.C.C. has the highest standards for all it does. I accept entirely its sincere efforts to cope with the problem and that the homeless are the peak of the "iceberg" and many more may be hovering on the edge of homelessness. The Government must help if suitable cause is shown and if no prejudice to major projects is involved. If employment is at the root of the trouble, that is a matter beyond the L.C.C, but I know that the L.C.C. would not wish to avoid the responsibility it has as a large, powerful and famous housing and welfare authority.
I come to the question of what should be done. First, more new housing. We all know that most of the new housing goes to re-house slum occupants and on re-housing in relation to major social purposes such as the building of schools and roads. I must confess that I came to the Department sharing the view of the hon. Member for Islington, South-West that perhaps we ought to consider pausing in the slum clearance, but when we read Farther Williamson's papers and realise that it is Cable Street that we would be pausing at, how could any Government or anybody wish to pause? It is a fact that as so many of the houses pulled down as slums contain more than one family so the L.C.C. has to build more than one house to demolish one house. But at the moment there is no restraint by the Government on the L.C.C. None at all Let nobody think there is.
What are the normal restraints?—[An HON. MEMBER:"Interest rates."]—I am coming to interest rates. First and most notorious of London's problems—land. Of course this has threatened as a major problem, but at the moment there is no immediate problem whatsoever and the L.C.C. can go flat out—much flatter out

than it is going now—for two or three years without running out of land. I would be delighted if the Council embarrassed the Government by running out sooner of the land in its possession.
Then, as my hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson) said and the hon. Member for Islington, North (Mr. Reynolds) stressed, there are the resources of railway land. Much of this land—do not let us conceal it from ourselves—is going to be expensive and difficult to use, often involving major engineering works before it can be used; but much of it is available and I hope it will be used. Then there is land at Kidbrooke available for the L.C.C.; and the possibilities in some areas of higher densities, though I would not count too much on that in the immediate future.

Mr. Jay: About the railway land, win the Minister take steps to see the land gets into the hands of the L.C.C. or other public authority and not the private developers'?

Sir K. Joseph: This is under discussion at the moment. It is a very large project, and it is under discussion with the L.C.C, but the L.C.C is not short of land for its immediate needs. I think the hon. Lady will confirm that. The railway land will be available for the L.C.C. before the Council needs it

Mrs. Corbet: The land is immediately ready?

Sir K. Joseph: Ready by the time the hon. Lady's Council needs it.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Islington, North asked me about the regional studies referred to by my predecessor and the calculation of overspill. These are fairly major studies. They are going on well, and I hope to be in a position to say something more about them towards the end of this year or very early next year. I do not want to be over-optimistic, because they are far-ranging studies.
While dealing with land, there are the town expansion and development schemes which the L.C.C. has embarked upon successfully.
The next limitation which restrains the L.C.C. from going faster is the limitation of staff, where technical and professional staff are very difficult to come


by, simply because the whole building industry is at full stretch throughout the country. Here, if there is anything the Department can do to help we shall do it.

Mr. Mellish: Then why not abandon the proposal for the reorganisation of local government? Because that is why people are not being attracted to local authority service.

Sir K. Joseph: Three comments on that. I am sure that there is no sort of demoralisation of staff because of this. The whole object of reorganisation —and even our most severe critics must accept that this is our purpose—is to make the services to the Londoner able to be more efficient.—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—Thirdly, if there is anything we cam do to help with staff we shall certainly do it.

Mr. Mellish: How?

Sir K. Joseph: Perhaps the biggest restraint of all is sheer lack of building labour to do as much work as I think the L.C.C. would wish, and here, as the hon. Lady and the House know, it is the hope of the Government that in many different parts of the building industry there will be a combination of better organisation both of means as well as builders, standardisation and industrialisation, and, above all, a will to put up the productivity per man per year of those who work on building sites. This is something we shall gradually come to see as the pace of improvement increases.
I come to the intervention by the right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North, who was particularly interested in the costs of new building. Of course, these are vitality serious factors. But the rent-paying capacity of the average citizen has risen; and also, even if there is, on individual buildings, be they flats or bought-in dwellings, a shortfall of revenue, the burden on the local authority is infinitely less than the cost of putting children to care—less in terms of money quite apart from in terms of human happiness.
So the first major theme of what can be done is the provision of more houses. I know that the L.C.C. shares this view. I hope that through all its great efforts at the moment, by organisation, industrialisation, standardisation, using the

sites which exist and forcing us to find more when they run out, it will manage to step up its rate of production.
The L.C.C. has bought 350 empty houses. The hon. Member for Bermondsey said that there are a large number of houses—he spoke of several thousands—in different parts of the county which are wholly or partly empty. I accept that in some cases there may be difficulties in buying empty houses, but we would hope that the L.C.C. would try to buy some of them. If it finds great difficulties in certain cases, it knows that it is open to it, where suitable, to invite us to confirm a compulsory purchase order.
The hon. Lady the Member for Peck-ham explained very cogently that if the L.C.C. buys good houses for the homeless those on the waiting list will bitterly resent the homeless getting such good treatment. In general, the L.C.C. in housing matters is often a model for other authorities, but it may be that in this one field it has something to learn from others. I will not be so invidious as to pick out other authorities; they are listed in the back of the survey giving the number of homeless in major cities. However, the fact is that despite similar problems in many other major cities, the number of homeless is much less. This could be caused by any one of a number of factors or a combination of them. But I believe that some authorities—I hope that the L.C.C. will follow up this suggestion—may have a better method of buying in houses which are not very good in order to take the first shock of any homelessness that there is. I leave that idea with the L.C.C.
As for the cost of buying houses, I believe sincerely that the L.C.C.—which, after all, received £4 million of subsidy from the taxpayer last year; I know that it has many things to do with its money but it had a housing revenue totalling £22 million last year—could afford to buy a few hundred more. But I have invited the members of the L.C.C. to submit a proposal to me if they really feel that they cannot afford to buy more.
The hon. Member for Fulham disposed quickly of under-occupation of L.C.C. dwellings. I grant all the difficulties, which he recognised, and I grant that there is no sudden panacea here.


I merely suggest that a combination of rent policy and the building of some more smaller dwellings as in-fillings on the L.C.C.'s estates may bring a slight alleviation and have some slight effect over a time.
It would be wrong of me to suggest that the L.C.C. could put more re-lets— it puts 75 a year now—at the disposal of the homeless. It is a difficult and invidious job for it to judge how to dispose of its vacant dwellings. I know that it has this in mind. But I am anxious to stress to the Council, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crosby suggested, that it would not be improper for them to go in for a larger temporary programme to meet this emergency. I think I can rely upon it considering this. So much for comments on what can be done at the moment.
It would be wrong of me not to say a word on a common target of the debate—the landlord. Of course some landlords exploit their position. No one denies it. There are certain protections in certain circumstances which are available to tenants in this position. I am not pretending that they are all-embracing. But the fact is that the landlords, or their predecessors, were those who saved the money with which to build or buy the houses that are serving society very well today. If they had not done that job, there would be fewer houses today for our expanded population. Wars and controls inseparable from wars have distorted all the incentives that normally lead a landlord to maintain his property. But no one serves the public purpose who abuses the whole race of landlords simply because some of them exploit their position.
I come now to sum up what I think has been the lesson of the debate. When all has been said and done, when we have done all we can to make better use of existing stocks of dwellings, the only hope for London and for Londoners is for two things—a continued drop in the resident population and a continued and much faster increase in dwellings, mainly low cost, either within the county or without, for Londoners.
I would like to think that more home ownership would help in the short-term here, but there is no disguising the fact that people who are homeless or on the

edge of homelessness have not nearly the prudent level of income which would would make it possible, even if they were helped by easier mortgages, to buy a house and maintain it. Indeed, in the absolute shortage of dwellings no one would be helped if more purchasers were put into the market. It would simply drive up the prices of existing stocks.
Nor do I see, I must tell my hon. Friends, any immediate hope in London —the long term is another matter—of any joint efforts by private enterprise and local authorities, although I hope that more and more private enterprise will enter upon low cost housing.
Finally, one cannot maintain the prosperity of a great city, in which the large majority of people live more comfortably than ever before, by freezing the pattern of life in it. People will seek prosperity. It is necessary, at the same time, to provide for those who cannot survive in these circumstances in decent conditions. That is why we undoubtedly need more low-cost housing in London and for Londoners. My job is to try to help the L.C.C. and other local authority housing providers to achieve just that.

Orders of the Day — COMMONWEALTH CO-OPERATION

6.42 a.m.

Mr. Patrick Wall: For the last few hours we have been discussing families in London. I now want to draw attention to another family— the family of the Commonwealth. We have had many debates on the Commonwealth in this House, but they have nearly all been of narrow scope. I cannot remember many which have been wide enough to cover the subject I want to raise, namely, the rôle of the Commonwealth and the methods of improving Commonwealth co-operation in the modern world.
I believe that this matter is of very great importance and I make no apology for raising it after an all-night sitting. I believe that in the past we in this country have neglected the Commonwealth and I believe that we have slowly woken up to the fact that it is rapidly changing in character. We have now accepted this change but have done


little to try to direct it. In short, we have failed to plan ahead.
During my eight years in this House I have been a member of a number of groups and committees considering Commonwealth problems. The Expanding Commonwealth Group has produced a number of pamphlets on those problems. A committee under the chairmanship of Lord Colyton sat in 1960 and produced a pamphlet called "The Wind of Change". Many important suggestions have been made. They have rarely, if ever, been acted upon.
I believe that the Commonwealth is now at the crossroads. This appeal for a positive policy for the future has been made at Commonwealth Parliamentary Conferences, but, as far as I know, it has not recently been raised in this House. I raise it now in the knowledge that fifteen Prime Ministers of the Commonwealth will be assembling in London in September and in the hope that some of these suggestions may be heard and acted upon.
I have said that the Commonwealth is at the crossroads. We have to face the fact that there is a growing division between the coloured and white members, that there is growing competition for the limited amount of development capital available, that there is tension between those members who have a democratic form of government and those who have an authoritarian form, and that there is strain due to different policies adopted by various Commonwealth Governments towards the cold war.
It has been said that the Commonwealth exists by trade, and it could obviously be greatly strengthened or be destroyed by the outcome of our negotiations with the European Economic Community. It is clear that all these stresses and strains to which I have referred exist to a much greater degree in the world itself, and we must not fail to realise the great intrinsic strength of the Commonwealth. It is probably the only international organisation that actually works and which genuinely tries to bridge the differences between white and coloured, between rich and poor, and between the East and West.
In the past we have heard a lot about the great moral strength and collective influence of the Commonwealth, but we

must think more of the future. Any living organisation must either expand or decay, and if the Commonwealth is to expand it must have a positive future. To put it another way, the Commonwealth must mean something to the man in the street, not only the man in the street in London or Ottawa, but the man in the street in Fiji and in the Falkland Islands. We must agree, if not on a common policy, at least on a common aim, and I suggest that to do this we must have the right structure and one which will encourage co-operation and mutual understanding between the various partners in the Commonwealth.
May I examine the problems which lie immediately ahead? In examining these problems, I think that we can begin to construct a framework designed to facilitate their solution. In the short term I suggest that the problem that faces us is that of colonialism, and by that I mean the problem of the political and economic future of the small dependent territories of the Commonwealth, a very large number of which are islands scattered round the world, and also the political and economic future of the still dependent territories in the Continent of Africa. In the long term I suggest that our main problem is that of consultation—consultation over aid, trade, and defence.
May I now turn to the problem of colonialism? Obviously this problem will end when all our Colonies are independent or at least self-governing, and we try to speed on that day by federation or by integration so as to form the smaller countries into larger groupings capable of standing on their own feat. In London this week there is a conference to discuss the future of the Federation of Malaysia, and another to discuss federation between the Colony and Protectorate of Aden and the various Sheikdoms of the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula.
But even if we federate and integrate all possible territories, there are still some which either geographically or historically cannot be dealt with in that way. and I suggest as examples Malta, Mauritius, and Hong Kong. It has been suggested that Malta should be integrated with this country. It has also been suggested that Mauritius should be federated with East Africa. But I doubt whether these are satisfactory solutions.
Would these small islands be satisfied with internal self-government? I very much doubt it. Could they be given full independence, as has been granted to Cyprus? I suggest that if this happened we should be faced with the same problem as the United Nations General Assembly now faces and that the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, which in September will be an intimate conference attended by fifteen Prime Ministers, would become a different state of affairs if fifty or sixty Prime Ministers had to meet together.
I therefore suggest that we must provide a structure which will allow these small territories to run their own affairs and at the same time to have a say in the formulation of Commonwealth policy. I believe that the best way to do this is to regionalise the Commonwealth. It is essential to maintain the vital importance of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference, but we should also encourage regional conferences of Commonwealth members on a functional basis, and by that I mean meetings not necessarily of Prime Ministers, but of Ministers of Agriculture, Transport, and so on.
I believe that if one studies the map, one way of regionalising the Commonwealth is to base the regions on the three great oceanic areas of the Commonwealth—the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific. This form of regionalisation would have further advantages to which I shall refer later in my speech.
I now want to refer to the problem of the still dependent territories in Africa—the Federation, Kenya, Zanzibar, the High Commission Territories and the Gambia. The common factor in all their problems is that they are bound to be solved within two, three or four years at the most. At the end of that time they will assume their final shape, either as fully sovereign or fully self-governing members of the Commonwealth. As these are transitional problems, I suggest that the existing Central Africa Office, which was created some months ago and which has been an enormous success and has done a great deal of good in Central Africa, should be expanded to become the Africa Office, and be given charge of the problems of these still dependent terri-

tories, bearing in mind that they will extinguish themselves in a maximum of four years. Only a man with the stature, authority and experience of the First Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister will have the time and authority to direct these countries along their final route to independence.
I turn now to my second point—the long-term problem of consultation on aid, trade and defence. On aid, we must remember that it is not only financial; it is also human. One of the best examples can be found in the Colombo Plan. There we have pooled help and membership not only of sovereign nations of the Commonwealth but also of foreign nations. We could use this Colombo Plan as a model for channelling aid in each of the three regions of the Commonwealth that I have previously suggested. If we set up this organisation we are almost bound to set up regional secretariats, and this would create an ideal machine through which to channel both British and foreign aid to the countries of the three regions.
If we do this we shall have to have a better organisation in this country. It will mean upgrading the present Department for Technical Co-operation to a Ministry of Overseas Aid, but I will not labour this argument now.
I turn briefly to the subject of trade, it is an enormous subject and one which could not be covered in the middle of a short speech. It is clear that Commonwealth trade must expand, and it will expand either by Britain's membership of the European Economic Community or, if this fails, by our revision of G.A.T.T. and negotiation of new Commonwealth agreements.
The only other points that I want to make on the subject of trade are, first, that more use should be made of the Commonwealth Economic Consultative Committee at Marlborough House, which is so much neglected by all members of the Commonwealth and, secondly, that the Commonwealth itself should give consideration to imaginative schemes, such as insurance against political risks, which I know is of great interest to the Joint Under-Secretary. If we had such insurance schemes it would make investment in the underdeveloped countries of the Commonwealth very much easier.
I now turn to defence. It is quite clear that some Commonwealth countries are leaders of the West and that other Commonwealth countries wish to remain unaligned, or neutral. There must be understanding between those two groups. I believe that tolerance is displayed to the unaligned nations by the leading nations of the West, but there is not nearly so much tolerance of the position of those Western nations by the uncommitted nations of the Commonwealth. It is after all on the leaders of the West, such as Britain, Canada and Australia, that the defence of the Commonwealth lies.
We sympathise with those countries which wish to contract out of any other world trouble, but we remember that one of the greatest nations in the world twice tried to do this and failed on each occasion. I refer to the United States of America, in the two great world wars. I hope that the uncommitted nations of the Commonwealth will realise that the leaders of the West must have certain strategic requirements. They must control fortress territories sited in key places in the world such as Aden, and I suggest that the garrisoning of these territories should be a Commonwealth commitment rather than a British commitment.
Secondly, the uncommitted nations must realise that Western defence depends on certain strategic areas such as Southern Africa. I believe that the newly-emergent nations of Africa from the south of the Sahara to the borders of the Federation will be African-led States with socialist economies and authoritarian Governments and will adopt a neutral policy. It is clear that the West will not be able to get strategic help from these countries and must therefore turn to the white-led countries of Southern Africa. I hope that that point will be realised and understood by the uncommitted countries of the Commonwealth and that toleration will work both ways.
I have tried to put before the House the problems which we face today summed up under the heading of colonialism in the short term and consultation in the long term. I suggest that we require a new structure in the Commonwealth to tackle these problems. In

the Commonwealth itself we require three regional oceanic areas, each with a regional secretariat organising functional conferences. We must maintain the importance of the summit conference of Prime Ministers which I suggest requires recasting. At the moment there are fifteen members, but if it is expanded to fifty or sixty members, it must have a different structure or it will degenerate into 3rd, 4th and 5th elevens. I borrow an idea from the Security Council of the United Nations where there are a number of permanent members, the great Powers of the world, and where the smaller nations elect members to represent them in rotation for a given period of time. This might provide an example for a future Commonwealth Conference where the regional areas could elect one of the smaller members to represent the smaller States, while the larger members attended the summit conference of the Commonwealth by right.
I believe that regionalisation will encourage co-operation between foreign countries and Commonwealth countries and therefore I suggest that the Commonwealth countries should consult among themselves and devise some status such as external association which would enable a country which wished to be associated with the Commonwealth, but not to join it, to enjoy many of the advantages of Commonwealth members without the key ones of consultation and citizenship. This might prove a first step to full membership.
Those are my suggestions for the Commonwealth and I turn now to possible reorganisation of the machinery for Commonwealth co-operation here at home. I have suggested that the Central Africa Office should become the Africa Office to deal with the problems of the still dependent territories of Africa for the next few years. The Commonwealth Office and the Colonial Office should be amalgamated. We have already taken a step towards that by having one Secretary of State. I suggest that the Commonwealth Office should be divided into three in accordance with the three oceanic regions, each section with a Minister of State at the head to whom Commonwealth statesmen in that region would refer and would not automatically go to the Secretary of State and so join a long queue to see one man, as happens


today. I suggest that in order to illustrate the importance of the Secretary of State he should be given a title such as the Chancellor of the Commonwealth, and that only top level operations should be referred to him.
I suggest that in future we should have one Overseas Civil Service which would incorporate the Foreign Service, the Colonial Service and the Commonwealth Service when serving overseas. While retaining the Foreign Office and Commonwealth Office in London, I suggest that this civil service would serve Britain's interests in both foreign and Commonwealth countries.
We should also have a Ministry of Overseas Aid. This Ministry would act as the instrument through which technical help would be channelled both to foreign and to Commonwealth countries. The differences between this technical assistance and the civil service would be that the civil service would serve Britain, whereas the technicians would be seconded by Britain or Commonwealth countries to serve the Commonwealth or foreign Governments to whom they would be seconded for a period of years.
I believe that some structure such as I have outlined would result in regional conferences and regional secretariats and that this in itself would lead to better understanding of the Commonwealth throughout the world. I believe that the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference would be better prepared and organised under some such system. I believe that the available capital in the world, both human and financial, would be better spread throughout the Commonwealth. I believe that this would mean that the Commonwealth would begin to amount to something to the man in the street.
If we got a better understanding, that would give the Commonwealth a meaning. A meaning would lead to a common aim. A common aim could lead to a Commonwealth policy. A commonwealth policy could positively bridge the gap between white and coloured and between rich and poor. If we fail to give the Commonwealth a meaning, the world will remain divided into two great power blocs, now known as East and West but perhaps in future divided between coloured and white. Then I sug-

gest a world clash would be almost inevitable.
We have the chance to take positive action, but only if we have the vision to look ahead.

7.2 a.m.

Mr. Paul Williams: The House is grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) for raising this matter, even at this either late or early hour. When I say "the House is", I rather doubt if I would carry you with me on that point, Sir. I will therefore keep my remarks as abridged and as much to the point as possible.
I agree with almost every word my hon. Friend said, but it seemed to me that there was one missing ingredient in his remarks. That was the prerequisite for a Commonwealth policy, which basically is a conviction on the Front Bench of the governing party that the Commonwealth is something worth while. I doubt whether this conviction carries the true note of a sound bell as it did in the Conservative Party in the past. If it did, these last twelve months need not have been consumed with the scurryings of Ministers between London and Brussels and the emissaries that have gone from London to the Commonwealth capitals to cajole, to browbeat and to influence the Commonwealth towards its own demise. If we had spent one-tenth of the energy of the last twelve months on promoting Commonwealth trade, instead of laying the foundations for the breakdown of Commonwealth trade, we should have had the prerequisite which my hon. Friend needs for the whole of the rest of his argument.
If I could be more convinced that the Conservative Party was today being true to its own historic ideals of belief in Commonwealth and promotion of the Commonwealth idea, I should be happier with both the last and the present Government than I am. If I saw any deep and abiding conviction that the sterling area was vital to our own standard of living and the chance of survival of a decent standard of life for every man, woman and child in this country, on that score also I should be happy.
There is one issue on Which some of us on this side would be prepared to be


persuaded that the Government had some understanding of the importance of the sterling area. I think of Katanga, for although she is not within the Commonwealth she is of considerable importance to the Commonwealth and to the sterling area.
Some of us, including my hon. Friends the Members for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) and for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison) raised the problem of Katanga almost two years ago to the day, in the Adjournment debate for the summer Recess in 1960. We were then and subsequently labelled, I suppose, the founder members of the"Katanga lobby". If to speak in defence of Britain's interests, if to speak in promotion of the sterling area, if to act in defence of Commonwealth causes is to be a member of a lobby, I am proud to be a member of that lobby. I would rather, at any rate, be a member of that lobby than of the United Nations lobby which has done so much to break down President Tshombe's attempt to bring a multi-racial form of government into operation and maintain law and order in a continent where there is precious little law and scant order. Those are things which some of us, even at this time of day, find it difficult to express adequately in words.
If I am brief on this matter, it is because conviction runs deep and strong. I believe that this Government will not even begin to turn the tide of electoral unpopularity until they can show openly and with conviction not only the techniques of Commonwealth co-operation but a fundamental faith and belief in its importance. This matter of faith is to be seen not by wearing it on one's sleeve but by acts. To hurry on down the path towards premature self-government in Africa is not to attain the blessing of freedom in Africa. It may lead to dictatorship and degradation. That is why some of us had some hesitations some years ago about the Government's sense of purpose in these great matters.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice that to amalgamate the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Colonial Office into an individual Commonwealth Office of much greater stature is one of the essential ingredients. I would that this new office were to become as great in the hierarchy of the

various parties as is the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. I would put it higher still. Until Commonwealth affairs rate that high in our priorities, I cannot believe that any Government of any party is do-ing more than bowing down before the image of Commonwealth co-operation.
There are many ways in which we can, in fact, show that we believe in Commonwealth. We do not show we believe in it by dismantling the structure of preferential trade in an attempt to ease our way in to an inward-looking European confederation, or federation, whichever it may become. What we need from this and from any other Government, and what the country needs and deserves, is an open and avowed expression of faith and action in the Commonwealth cause.

7.8 a.m.

Mr. John Biggs-Davison: I suppose that the Liberals are with us in spirit. The other great Commonwealth party opposite has almost given up the ghost, and, in the interests of all of our colleagues and more particularly of those who minister to us in this House, I shall try to be brief.
I think my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) was right to raise this great topic of the Commonwealth even now, and I only hope that the speeches that we are making at this time are not in the way of funeral orations. Many of the good ideas which my hon. Friend has put before the House this morning were worked on in the Expanding Commonwealth Group in which we were associated with others of our hon. Friends. The Expanding Commonwealth Group has some achievements to its credit. It has produced excellent Ministers, and we are glad that my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State will be replying to us in a few moments.
My hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice has mentioned the amalgamation of the Colonial Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office. That, indeed, was something at which we battered for quite a long time in the Expanding Commonwealth Group. Indeed, we have another achievement to our credit. "Expanding Commonwealth"is nowadays by way of being


quite a Government gambit; it is a cliché frequently in use in platform perorations.
I want to speak of one matter which did exercise the mind of the Commonwealth Group, and that is trying to remove some of the excessive fluctuation in the prices of the commodities upon which the less-developed members of the Commonwealth are so dependent. Such fluctuations, it has been said, can almost nullify overnight millions of pounds worth of aid poured into these territories. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was so recently Colonial Secretary, both as Colonial Secretary and in his opening speech in this House as Chancellor, raised this vital question. He said on 26th July, only a few days ago,
In the past, we have been prepared "—
that is, we in Britain—
to take part in international commodity schemes based in each case upon the particular problems of any individual commodity—the Wheat Agreement, the Tin Agreement, and the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement, all of great importance to our economy.
My right hon. Friend might have added that they were also of great importance to the economy of our overseas partners.
But we have reached the time when we must look at the whole problem again and make a fresh attempt to secure new and revised agreements on commodities. The work is going on in respect of coffee in New York, and projects for a cocoa agreement are being considered. I hope that we shall make a new advance and a new approach to the general problem of commodity agreements because the low price of commodities certainly threatens the balance of international trade, and is a very serious problem for many underdeveloped countries."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th July, 1962; Vol. 663, c. 1855…6.]
Sir, it is the dignity of trade, rather than the entanglements of aid which the underdeveloped countries, inside and outside the Commonwealth, desire; and that is one of the reasons why it is so vital that we should improve and strengthen, instead of undermine, the preferential trading arrangements of the Commonwealth.
It was disturbing that the Lord Privy Seal should have come to the House to say he had offered to end the industrial preferences, not because these represent at the present time a great section of our Commonwealth imports, but because it comes at a time when

the overseas members of the Commonwealth are trying to industrialise and diversify their economies, and reduce their dependence on one or two crops or resources, and because it lends colour to the accusations now being levelled against us in India, and Ghana and elsewhere, that the Common Market is designed to keep the less-advanced members of the Commonwealth as hewers of wood and drawers of water—the favourite phrase—in a world scheme organised in the interests of the great creditor nations of Europe and North America.
The Lord Privy Seal's statement yesterday was also disturbing. I pray that the Government will stand firm on the pledges made so often and take careful note of the Motion now on the Order Paper of this House recalling the Prime Minister's pledges of 2nd August, 1961. It is not enough to say, as the leading Americans say, that the oversea Commonwealth countries and the French-African territories can be compensated for the loss of preferential 1rade arrangements by capital aid. That is not enough. They desire, as I have said, the dignity of trade, rather than the entanglements of aid.
We in the Commonwealth went on a wrong track in 1954 at the time of the Sydney Conference. Perhaps it was done under American pressure. It was put to us that we should wait to see what the Randall Report had to offer. At that conference, the Finance Ministers decided to concentrate on financial investment and neglected to press for the attainment of preferential markets to absorb the products of financial investments in the Commonwealth. It has been the failure of the Commonwealth, our failure, to modernise the obsolete Ottawa system and to restore the eroded preferences which has meant that the dependent territories in Africa and elsewhere have been given independence without the economic structure to sustain it.
The free world today is governed by rigid gold parities, by non-discrimination in trade but discriminatory financing by aid and loans. The result of this system has been to perpetuate economic imbalance and to over-centralise lending power in New York and a few other centres. The developing countries are


compelled—this is the story of economic development at this time—to borrow money to pay the interest on previous loans they have borrowed. They resent their state of debtor-dependence. They are attracted not only by the lower interest rates offered by the Communist bloc but by its claim to champion their national sovereignty—a false claim, we know—against international finance.
The Governments of the new developing countries in many cases resort to totalitarian methods, as has happened in the Commonwealth itself, and try to find relief for their economic problems, made almost insoluble for them, in violence and aggression. They play East against West. They take aid and loans first from one and then from the other. In this age of the nuclear stalemate, they know their bargaining position.
Therefore, it should be our purpose within the Commonwealth—and, I would hope, within a Commonwealth-European trading association of nations —to try to remove some of these causes of world conflict. For I believe that these are causes of world conflict. One of the prime causes of dissension in the world is the international maldistribution of wealth and power. In my view, it is our interest, and in consonance with our ideal, to work for agreements with the developing countries particularly in the Commonwealth but also other overseas territories linked with Europe on fair and reasonable stable prices for their commodities and, therefore, expanding markets for reciprocal trade.

7.18 a.m.

Mr. Anthony Fell: I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) for raising this matter at this time.

Sir Barnett Janner: At this time?

Mr. Fell: Even at this hour, it might not do us any harm to remind ourselves that all of our constituents, the constituents of those of us who are here and of those who are at home, owe their livelihoods and their position as citizens of this country to the existence of the Commonwealth. This is fact. My hon. Friend should not feel in any way uneasy about having started this debate this

morning. I say again that I am very grateful to him for having done so.
My horn. Friend said that the Commonwealth was at a cross-roads. He always uses moderate language. I believe that the Commonwealth is not at a crossroads, but is on the edge of a precipice, and if it falls over it will never recover in a form recognisable to us. If we think of the Commonwealth, as far too many people do, as not including Britain, it will take Britain with it.
To me, it is incredible that the leadership of this great constitutional Commonwealth party—the Conservative Party— should so have forgotten its principles, should be so bereft of foresight, that it cannot see that mixture of the Commonwealth and signature of the Treaty of Rome by this country is, frankly, impossible. At least, it is impossible if the Commonwealth is to survive. May I say why I believe this is so and why I am astonished that the leaders of this country have not seen this?
The Commonwealth is, as everybody knows, an outward-looking group of nations tied by no political strings. It is, more than any other organisation in the world, in the twentieth century vein. It is the one grouping of nations under which Colonies have been able, one after another, to gain complete and absolute freedom and independence. This has been the cry of the twentieth century of small countries all over the world.
This is an outward-looking association of nations held together by all sorts of invisible ties but by no tight political ties of any sort. It so happens that until there is somebody in the Commonwealth who is capable and able to take over the leadership of the Commonwealth from Great Britain, we have to continue to lead it and we have a duty so to do.
If that be true, how is it possible for leaders in their right senses not to see that if we join the Treaty of Rome, and if that may mean federation or some sort of political union at any time in the future, this must cost us the Commonwealth, for we can no longer be leaders of the Commonwealth if that happens?

Mr. Wall: I am trying to follow my hon. Friend's argument. If Britain had to divest herself of the Commonwealth


to go into the European Economic Community, I would agree with him. But, surely, if Britain can arrange it so that she takes the Commonwealth with her into E.E.C. and we have something like forty-seven associated nations led by ourselves, that would alter the whole outlook and a marriage of the Commonwealth and Europe could be highly successful.

Mr. Fell: My hon. Friend has much more credulity about this than I have. We are getting to the stage where we cannot stop looking for geese that lay golden eggs, when we cannot stop looking for an easy solution to all our problems. It does not matter what that solution is provided that we in Britain get some material gain out of it, and get the material gain quickly.
One talks glibly about taking the whole of the Commonwealth in with us. As the negotiations have been going for the last year, does it really look as though there is any conceivable chance of taking the Commonwealth into Europe with us? Of course this is a fantasy and our leaders know perfectly well that it is a fantasy. If there were no chance of that it is hardly likely that the Commonwealth Prime Ministers would be as worried as they are.
I do not want to be drawn off too much. I want to speak for only another few minutes. Can one appeal to the Government to understand that the British people are not so backward, so poor in spirit and so lacking in courage that they have reached a position where they are entirely unable to face difficulties? I suspect that the reason that we are trying desperately to get into the E.E.C. is the simple reason that we are looking for an easy way out of our difficulties. Suppose we look for an easy way out and in the process we desert our friends. Can someone tell me whether it has ever done any human being on earth or any nation on earth any good to desert his friends in order to make personal gain?

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: Ask the Prime Minister.

Mr. Fell: I am at a loss to know what other reason there is for us even to contemplate joining the Treaty of Rome unless we are pushed more

heavily than we have been told. I just do not understand the argument that we have to go into Europe because this will give us 300 million people in our trading area. So what? There are 250 million of them there now. I am not aware that our trade is decreasing with Europe at the moment.
If we do what my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice has advised and take some of these measures to concentrate on building up what we have, it may be that we can face the challenge of Europe and sell over what barriers there may be. Incidentally, I should have thought it highly improbable that France would want to stop selling goods to us, or that Germany would want to stop selling goods to us, and slightly improbable that Italy would want to stop selling goods to us. I should have thought that we could go on trading with Europe in any case, and indeed, increase our trade with Europe even if we did not join.
If we axe thinking about the immediate term it may be that some bankers in the City want us to go in. This has been said. One hears it if one goes about the City. They will not say it out loud; of course not. It may be that some industrialists in this country want us to go in because that is the way they think that we can solve our industrial problems. They do not say it out loud either, but they say it in private.
If we have reached the stage in this country when we have to get Italy, Germany, France, Belgium and Holland to settle our industrial affairs in Britain we have reached a pretty poor pass. What about the suggestion that we cannot trade unless we go into Europe? Where is the increase in trade in the world coming from if the world does not go backwards? If the word goes backwards of course we should not be interested because the whole thing would collapse. It must go forward. Surely the places where our trade has the greatest possibility of increase are in those areas of the world where the people are backward and where they must advance at an increasing pace, in other words on the continent of Africa, in Asia and in South America. Therefore, even on the grounds of trade, I cannot see any excuse of any sort for running the risk of letting down our friends, breaking up the whole of the


Commonwealth, and extinguishing not only our good name but probably, in the long run, extinguishing Great Britain as a great nation as well.
We cannot, in my belief, continue to think that by a policy based solely on recognition of materialism as the highest aim of the British people we can lead the British people. If that is what we think we cannot lead the British people. If at every election we are to have a sort of bargaining match between the two great parties—and even the little one—as to who will promise the most, we shall follow the way which in the long run leads to suicide for this nation. Much more than material things are needed to satisfy the spirit of the British people—and these are things of the spirit. They are faith. The British people have got to be given an ideal.
It is no use blaming the British people if now they seem to be a bit materialistically minded, for our leadership has been materialistically minded ever since the war. Time and time again there have been occasions when we could have said to the British people, "Let us not take the £1,000 million loan from America. What do we want to do? Put ourselves in hock to America, or stand on our own feet and fight our way out of our problems?" The answer of the British people, if the question had been put to them in the right way, and if they had an ideal to work for, would have been, "For heaven's sake, let us stand on our own feet and work our way out."
I have perhaps been rude from time to time about the leadership of this country. I said a year ago that it was a disaster for us even to agree to negotiate about the Common Market. I thought I must be mad at the time to think that the moment we entered negotiations the Commonwealth countries all over the globe would be—as they are— looking for other countries to take their products, that the moment we entered negotiations faith would evaporate in Britain, that from the moment we entered the negotiations Commonwealth links were doomed to go through at least a rough time. Time has proved that I was not mad. It is with no personal feeling against the Prime Minister or any other Minister of the Conservative Government that one must go on saying, till they realise the enormity of that proposition, for heaven's sake do

not just think of material gain, but think of our friends, think of loyalty, and think of faith.

7.35 a.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (Mr. John Tilney): First, I should like to thank my hon. Friend, an old colleague of mine in the Expanding Commonwealth Group, the hon. Member for Chigwell (Mr. Biggs-Davison) for his word of welcome to me. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice (Mr. Wall) for his many interesting points about the structure and the future of the Commonwealth. We all know his immense interest in the Commonwealth and his expertise, particularly on Africa. He has put forward many most interesting ideas, which will be studied very carefully.
My hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and other hon. Friends of mine have, I believe, laid great stress— possibly too much stress—on the great difficulties that are facing the Commonwealth today. My hon. Friend the Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell)—I know how deeply he feels about these matters —referred to the Commonwealth being on the edge of a precipice, and my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. P. Williams) spoke with great sincerity about the dangers that face us. But I would commend what is written in an admirable booklet "The Modern Commonwealth", written by my right hon. Friend. A sentence in it says:
Instead of highlighting the things which divide us, we must show ourselves capable of working constructively together for the ideals which are common to us all.
Efforts are continuing in relation to Katanga—which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South; I am merely sorry that I had not notice from him that the matter would be raised—to bring about national conciliation in the Congo. These endeavours are receiving the wholehearted support of Her Majesty's Government. One hopes that we shall see some fair division of revenues between the provinces and the central Government, possibly some federal system there, and even, when that has been established, some economic assistance from outside. But it has to be worked out by the Congolese themselves. Other friendly


nations will then assist them. It is not for us or, I believe, for the United Nations to impose a political or military solution.
My hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice referred to the difficulties and to the forthcoming Prime Ministers' Conference. This Conference will, one hopes, be able to erase and eliminate some of those difficulties. He referred, taking the long view, to the Prime Ministers' Conference being increased in size greatly in the future. At the present time fifteen are eligible to come as against twelve at the last meeting. All have been invited this time. The majority have already accepted. It may be difficult for one or two, for special reasons, to come, but it is hoped that they will be represented at the Conference by a senior Minister. But these figures are very different from the numbers in the United Nations, and I do not see how my hon. Friend's suggestion of applying the rules of the Security Council are really applicable to the Prime Ministers' Conference.
My hon. Friend's remarks about regional conferences were interesting, but, except for looking at special problems, I very much doubt whether these would be practicable. We must remember the time factor in these days, when the world is really smaller than Great Britain was 200 years ago, and the life of great leaders of countries is more hectic, and problems such as these, even the regional problems, can in many ways be discussed and made easy. When the Prime Ministers meet together they can divide up and talk from time to time about their own regional problems.

Mr. Wall: I suggested that these regional conferences should be mainly functional—that is, not meetings of Prime Ministers but of Ministers such as Ministers of Agriculture or Transport.

Mr. Tilney: There are quite a number of functional conferences already and I will refer to them a little later. At these regional conferences not only are Commonwealth Ministers represented but Ministers of foreign countries as well. I believe that the Prime Ministers of the smaller countries would not regard such regional meetings as a substitute for attendance at the central meetings.
I suspect that my hon. Friend wishes to some extent to formalise the spirit of the Commonwealth, which has acted in a completely unregimented way up till now. I agree that new thought is wanted, yet elasticity is vital. We do not want to bind the Commonwealth with some rigid arrangement.
We have, of course, a regional secretariat looking after the Colombo Plan; we have S.E.A.T.O.; we have Africa South of the Sahara; we have the Caribbean Commission, the South Pacific Commission and also—and this is a good analogy—the East African Common Services Commission. These are special regional commissions. I hope that their arrangements will grow and I believe that it is better to leave it that way.
My hon. Friend suggested oceanic regions where smaller countries could co-operate with larger members of the Commonwealth. I cannot speak here for the Colonial Office, but I believe that no gimmick really will be as good as independence. I believe that most smaller countries will still want their Prime Ministers or Heads of State to be represented at the centre and that there is no halfway to full-time citizenship for their countries.
It is impossible to lay down a blue print which will apply to all the various dependent territories that one thinks can become independent. I believe that their constitutions have to be tailor-made. Each has an individual political soul. I also do not believe that all small dependencies want even today full independence in the future. It must be wrong to force them at times against their will into some bigger organisation OS" even to give them complete independence against their will.
My hon. Friend referred to the Central Africa Office and wished to extend its scope. I remind him of what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said on 15th March:
While responsibility was divided between my right hon. Friend the Commonwealth Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary, the two Ministers were apt to be regarded in some quarters as identified with conflicting sectional interests in the Federation; and for this reason it would not be practicable to secure the desired unification of ministerial responsibility by transferring the functions of either to the other. Therefore, with the full agreement of the two Secretaries


of State concerned … I have invited my right hop. Friend the Home Secretary to undertake this responsibility."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 15th March, 1962; Vol. 655, c. 1545.]
I believe that Central Africa is a special case and that it would be dangerous, therefore, to increase the bounds of the Central Africa Office.
My hon. Friend referred, very rightly, to consultation. It may not be known that every year 35,000 telegrams go to our missions in Commonwealth countries, two-thirds of which deal with foreign affairs and political and economic matters. There is a tremendous interchange of matter and knowledge. Indeed, the United Kingdom is a bridge between the Commonwealth and Europe, and because of the position I once held as P.P.S. to the Minister of Transport I realise how important bridges are in modern conditions, and that many of them have to be renewed or even double banked.
My hon. Friend referred to aid. In 1961 we in the United Kingdom invested overseas no less than £347 million, between £100 million and £200 million in developing countries. It is a great achievement, and many countries richer per head than we are do not do so well. But of course, if conditions in developing countries can be seen to be stable, then, in my opinion, private investment will be prepared to invest even more money, and I believe that this is realised more and more in developing countries and internationally.
My hon. Friend next referred to a Ministry of Overseas Aid. But let us remember, on the technical side—and I will not go into them now—the arguments sat out in the White Paper, Recruitment for Service Overseas, Cmnd. 1740. It is by no means easy to build up a permanent technical force which can be seconded to different Commonwealth countries, because it is very difficult to decide the size or scope of what will be wanted in five or ten years and to offer a reasonable livelihood and career to those people.
On the financial side, let us remember that money is limited, so we must not raise the hopes of many of these territories too high. But there are the regional offices for channelling the Colombo Plan, and there is the Special

Committee for Assistance for Africa Plan, known as S.C.A.A.P., and my hon. Friend was good enough to refer to the insurance and political considerations. I commend to the House quite a good Conservative Party pamphlet entitled "Towards victory over poverty" and to the suggestion made therein, which will be studied, that some form of insurance against political risks might be undertaken, in the same way as the United States of America, Germany, and Japan have their schemes. It may be that we could have a Commonwealth scheme, but all one can say is that this is being looked at. The O.E.C.D. is studying a similar scheme, as is the World Bank. One hopes therefore that in future years something of the sort may be brought about. I believe that there are great possibilities in this field, but it must be a multi-lateral one.
I do not believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Yarmouth will expect me to follow him in what he said about the Common Market. I do not believe that we are deserting our friends in any way, and we all hope that the Common Market will be outward, rather than inward looking, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South suggested, because I believe that a rich Europe will help both the developed and the developing countries by providing not only for an expanded but a constantly expanding market.

Mr. Fell: My hon. Friend's last remark about the Common Market seems to mean that he is taking it for granted that we shall join the Common Market.

Mr. Tilney: I have said nothing of the sort. All I have said is that we hope that, even if we do not go in, the existing Common Market will be outward-looking and not inward-looking. There must be room for greatly increased trade. We have only to think of the great riches of the United States of America, and the benefit of America, not only to itself but to other countries, to realise the importance of this. I have great sympathy with what my hon. Friend the Member for Chigwell, said about the fluctuations of commodities, and about the need for trade rather than aid, but at this late hour I am sure that he will forgive me if I do not go into detail.
On defence, I will report to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Defence the views expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice, but I hope that he will remember that this country rejects the idea of an inherent superiority of one race over another. When he emphasised the white part of South Africa, I was not quite sure that he was completely with me on this point.
Finally, I want to deal with the Overseas Civil Service, and also say a word about the expanding Commonwealth. My hon. Friend and I in the past have believed that a single Overseas Service might be brought about. I have gone into print with him on that subject. All that I can say now is that the matter will be one of the suggestions that my right hon. Friend will consider. As for the expanding Commonwealth, I do not believe that it can be static; it either goes forward or backward. We either have to expand or decay. The House will remember that we have had many arguments about the Colonial Development Corporation, and have said that it should not be left entirely to the rump of Colonial Territories. I hope that a decision about this is imminent, and that we will see, in that decision, a clear indication that Government policy is expansive and not contracting. As a Commonwealth we must have an active and vital rôle to play in the future of world trade, but we want flexibility and not rigidity.
I will convey all the views expressed by my hon. Friend to my right hon. Friends. I congratulate my hon. Friend on the useful ideas he has put forward. The responsible democracy that we have in this country will enjoy debating the suggestions which have been put forward today. Some of them will obviously be rejected, but others may be taken up. I believe that the Commonwealth future is brighter than that suggested by some of my hon. Friends. I hope that when history is written it will be found that one or two of my hon. Friend's ideas have been put into effect.

Orders of the Day — SCHOOL, WHITLEY BAY (ACCESS ROAD)

7.54 a.m.

Dame Irene Ward: In turning from a discussion of the Commonwealth to a more domestic matter in my constituency, I take some comfort from the fact that my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations referred to the value of bridges. That point enters into the comments that I wish to make on the issue that I want to discuss.
In May of this year I raised the question of the Whitley Bay Grammar and Technical School and the lack of a safe road access to the school. I make no apology for raising it again because although we have made some progress, we have not yet achieved what my local authority and the education authority in my constituency consider satisfactory conditions for the children who go to the school. Allied with this school is the Valley Gardens Secondary School, and when the grammar school is completed, as anticipated, by this autumn, there will foe between 1,600 and 2,000 children going to the schools. It is therefore absolutely essential that there should be a safe road access for them.
For some extraordinary reason the decision of the Northumberland County Council, under pressure to speed up from the Ministry of Education set in motion the plans for this school without there being any consideration given to the need for a safe road access. When I raised the matter in May the Leader of the House was pleased that it was the decision of the local authority to choose the site without getting the approval of the Ministry of Education. It seems unfortunate to me that a grammar school of that magnitude should be set up without there being a safe road access for the children.
No such provision had been made in May. There was only a small and complicated hump bridge over which two cars can hardly pass and there is no footpath of any kind. Since then representations have been made and it has been decided that there shall be a clip-on bridge—whatever that is—added to the hump bridge, and also that there shall be a footbridge over the electric


railway. Children have been seen lifting their bicycles on to the railway and crossing over the line and lifting their machines over the other side to gain access to the Valley Gardens School.
I wish to thank the former Minister of Education for the trouble he took to persuade the Northumberland County Council to make even a 50 per cent. grant to the Borough of Whitley Bay to provide the clip-on bridge. But for this intervention, the whole of that burden would have fallen on that small local authority, despite the fact that the whole of the arrangements for building the school and choosing the site (bad been done without consulting the Whitley Bay authority. In spite of the new arrangements we have no road programme and I consider it deplorable that no proper road should be provided in connection with a school of this magnitude.
The first document I want to quote is a letter from the town clerk of Whitley Bay. The letter was written on 14th July. Mr. Watson says:
You may remember that in my earlier letter I pointed out that I feel the most satisfactory solution to the whole question of access would be the acceleration of the construction of Monkseaton Drive extension. The bridges, whilst terribly important from the safety point of view, really assume secondary proportions when compared with Monkseaton Drive Extension which should be the main form of access to the school. I cannot help feeling that as long as the pressure is concentrated on Relton Terrace and Monkseaton Drive footbridges Government Departments will take the attitude"—
as indeed they have—
that Relton Terrace Bridge is on an unclassified district road and is a matter for the two local authorities and not for the Government Department concerned.
I turn from that to draw attention to what the Leader of the House said to me last May. I quote him:
First, there is the question of access to the new secondary school"—
it is in fact a grammar school—
being built there".
That is at Whitley Bay.
She"—
that is me—
cites this as an instance of bad co-ordination between the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Education. Her case is that these matters should have been settled before the construction was approved.

I do indeed think that.
To me"—
that is, to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House—
that is nothing like so important as getting the matter settled before the school is open, which will happen next year. We have every confidence that the matter will be settled by then."—{OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th May, 1962; Vol. 659, c. 88.]
That matter has not been settled by then and the confidence of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has been misplaced. I now hope that he will be on my side and move forward to provide the road access which is so essential.
The next quotation I want to make is just to put in perspective the relationship of my local authority to the county council. Again I quote my town clerk, who wrote me on 13th June to this effect:
The main difficulties arising out of the grammar technical school development are, of course, that the school was accelerated in the school building programme at the same time as the Tyneside Conurbation Major Highways Committee had to defer the priority rating of Monkseaton Drive Extension for at least five years. I believe that the local education committee"—
that is, the Northumberland County Council—
were probably hoping that the Monkseaton Drive Extension would be constructed in the year 1964–65, probably in accordance with the school buildings originally scheduled so that Monkseaton Drive Extension could form the main access to the school. As you know, this has now been rendered impossible by the advancement of the school building programme so that the grammar technical school is expected to be completed and ready for use in the autumn of this year … In the Council's view"—
that is, in the view of the Whitley Bay Council—
the really satisfactory solution of this whole question of access to the grammar technical school would undoubtedly be the acceleration of the Monkseaton Drive Extension which would carry Monkseaton Drive from its present terminus right up Earsdon Road towards the school. If the Ministry of Transport would be prepared to classify this road, then it would attract grant. You may remember from our earlier correspondence that they are not prepared to give a provisional classification in advance for the road, although they are prepared to accede that it will be a principal traffic route.
That brings me to the point that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport has strongly said in the House that he has no responsibility. That did not happen to be correct.


because the correspondence which has passed between his own divisional road engineer and the Northumberland County Council and the introduction of my Whitley Bay local authority into the discussions proves conclusively that the Minister of Transport is concerned. I therefore make no excuse for saying this because I am not going to allow any Minister to tell me that I am making false statements when, in fact, the information that I was giving was absolutely accurate.
I now want to quote a letter which was written by the county surveyor commenting on the correspondence between the divisional road engineer, myself and the town clerk. This was written on 29th December. Mr. Garnett, the County Surveyor for the Northumberland County Council, said:
I refer to your letter"—
this is to my town clerk—
of the 27th December, 1961, and previous correspondence regarding the above new road."—
that is the Monkseaton Drive extension.
The delay in replying to your earlier letter has been due to uncertainty regarding the placing of schemes in the Tyneside Major Highways programme in which this particular scheme is included. As I think you know the scheme was included in the fifth year (1964–65) of the original programme. Due to a vast increase in cost of many schemes, the programme has had to be reviewed and, unless the Minister is prepared to make a big increase in the amount of money available, many schemes are going to be put back a number of years. Under these circumstances, it is quite impossible for me to give any indication of when this scheme can be expected to be carried out. As regards Ministry of Transport grant, the Divisional Road Engineer has already said that he is unable, at this stage, to say whether or not the construction would be regarded as a classified road scheme although it has been accepted as a Principal Traffic Route".
The controversy arose on whether the money could be found for the scheme, as between the Minister of Transport and the county council. All I am saying is that there is no doubt that the lives of children are involved here. I have sent to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary a statement from the headmaster of the Valley Gardens School and accounts from the parents who have made representations in support of the case that I am making. If it was important and in the interests of educa-

tion that the Minister of Education pressed the Northumberland County Council to accelerate the building of the Whitley Bay Grammar and Technical School, it was equally important that there should have been proper coordination and a scheme to provide a safe road access in accordance with the proposals that had been put forward to the Minister of Transport. I can see no escape from the force of that proposition.
I want to quote one other letter in order to emphasise the point I am making. I have a letter from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport which he wrote on 12th April, in which he said:
The Monkseaton Drive extension is marked on the Town Map as a principal traffic route joining A.193 to A.192. At the time this was decided, our Divisional Road Engineer made it quite clear to the Northumberland County Council that he was doubtful about the road's value as a through traffic route. He was not prepared to agree to any particular classification for it in advance. We are now even more doubtful about the advisability of planning this road as a through route, since its main use will be to serve local development in the area west of the railway line. In these circumstances, we do not think it merits an early place in the road programme.
So far as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport in writing to me telling me that this particular scheme does not merit an early place in the road programme is concerned, I would point out that I was told an this House that he bad no responsibility whatever for this particular development. I am not going to take that kind of nonsense when the safety of children's lives is involved.
If, after consideration, my hon. Friend feels that the original scheme was unsatisfactory from his point of view, and if we had had the co-operation I was promised from the Government Departments last May, we should not have had the building of a grammar technical school without safe access for the children. I now ask, today, how we are going to resolve this dilemma. Sometimes—and I say this advisedly because it is the opinion of all those who know about this problem—it is said that the Northumberland County Council having acceded to the request of the Minister of Education to accelerate the school building programme, and now that the school is being built, will now say, "There it is, and it is up to you". That person is the Minister of Transport, and


if my right hon. Friend is not going to consider as part of his duty the safety of children, them it would be a good plan if the county council called a halt to the building of the school—it is not yet finished—so that the Minister of Education could then take a much stronger line with the Minister of Transport in order to ensure that the necessary road would be built and the children would have safe access.
At this hour of the morning I have no other observations to make except to say that when an hon. Member of this House raises a question about lack of co-ordination between Government Departments and my right hon. Friend said very courteously that it was important to have a satisfactory solution and also agreed to accept my Motion about Departmental co-ordination, I find it disturbing that in July I have to draw the attention of the Leader of the House to the fact that he is here only because earlier in the day the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport refused to answer my complaint. That I find an extraordinary thing. I gave him as I gave you, Mr. Speaker, sufficient notice, and I should apologise to you for committing a breach of House of Commons manners on the last occasion. I do not know who is going to reply to me.
I cannot abide Ministers who do not tell the truth; if he had told me the truth I should have accepted it. There is Ministerial responsibility here, whatever has been said, and I have been promised co-ordination. The school is necessary, and the fact that the Minister has not even sent up a senior official to look at the place, and at this whole problem, is unfortunate.
So far as the hump bridge is concerned, there is another bridge not far away and it would be possible, I am told, to have one-way traffic over the bridge in order to help the traffic arrangements. But if we are to have a stubborn Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport, then I do not know what I can do except to say how much I deplore the action of the Minister in relation to his responsibility. I now look forward to hearing from whoever is to answer what I have said today that the paramount consideration is the safety and the lives of our children.

8.15 a.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. John Hay): At the outset, I ought to clear up this point about responsibility. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Tyne-mouth (Dame Irene Ward) is under some misapprehension about what the exact situation is. I do not ask her to accept from me alone that we cannot accept responsibility in this case. On 3rd July last, answering a question on this very point, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that
the provision of a safe access to this school is a matter for the local authorities and not for either of the two Ministries."—[OFFICIAL REPORT. 3rd July, 1962; Vol. 662, c. 275.]
He was referring, of course, to the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Education.
We have throughout taken the point that, since what is at issue here is traffic on two unclassified roads, and since the Minister of Transport does not make a grant in respect of unclassified roads, there is no clear burden of responsibility resting on the Minister of Transport. We have throughout said to my hon. Friend that, if only she would take it up with the proper authorities, we would do what we could to assist in a solution but we could not accept responsibility for a solution. What is involved here is a certain lack of co-ordination not between Government Departments, as I see it, but between local authorities, for the local education authority is the Northumberland County Council, the local planning authority is the same county council, and the local highway authority is the Whitley Bay Borough Council. It seems to me, looking at this again, that, if only at an earlier stage greater thought had been given to the co-ordination of the siting of the school and the timing of its building, this situation might not have arisen.
As the House now knows from what my hon. Friend has said, we are here concerned with a school built virtually, as I understand it, in open country, or at least on the outskirts of the town of Whitley Bay. To this school there are only two means of access. One is by an unclassified road which carries the Relton Terrace Bridge. The improvement of that bridge and of the road is entirely the responsibility of the Whitley Bay Borough Council, and my right hon.


Friend the Minister of Transport has no locus standi whatever in the matter. The other road by which one can gain access to the school, as the children at present are doing, is Monkseaton Drive. This also is an unclassified road, and again my right hon. Friend pays no grant and has no direct responsibility for its upkeep.
We have in the past had suggestions made to us that the Monkseaton Drive should be extended to provide a through traffic route, but this has not been given a high priority on traffic grounds. The proposals for new construction or improvement of classified roads in the Tyneside conurbation, which includes Whitley Bay, are in the hands of a joint committee of local highway authorities, and on this joint committee the interests of Whitley Bay Borough are cared for by the Northumberland County Council. The joint committee has submitted to us a list of proposed schemes for the next six or seven years, and the Minister of Transport is considering those schemes for grant now. I must tell my hon. Friend that the joint committee has never given a high priority to the proposal for developing Monkseaton Drive to the west and changing its status from that of an unclassified road to that of a classified road. I must also say that my right hon. Friend is not prepared to override the 'priorities which the local people on the spot, who are responsible, decide they would like for their own conurbation.
The Whitley Bay Borough Council, like all of us, is anxious about the safety of the children who go to the school, but it is right to put on record that the council is also interested in the extension of the road called Monkseaton Drive because it wishes to develop the land through which the extension would pass. The council wants to build housing estates along there. What it would apparently very much like to see is the Minister of Transport prepared to treat Monkseaton Drive as a classified road, pay grant upon it, to extend it and to improve it with public funds, and then on either side a housing estate could be developed.
We always take the view that there are considerable disadvantages on road safety grounds in planning a principal

traffic route to pass through a housing estate or area. The line of the proposed new road is shown, it is true, as a principal traffic route on the Whitley Bay town map, but we have frequently in correspondence completely reserved our decision on whether, in these circumstances, this road will merit classification. We take the view that another route should be sought for through traffic.
Perhaps I may say a word about the present difficulties. When my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth and I had a passage at arms on 4th July last, she was rather inclined to accuse me of not being interested in the danger to the lives of schoolchildren. When I attempted to repudiate that suggestion, I was fairly well howled down by her; but perhaps in the calmer atmosphere prevailing now, I can say a word about it.
On safety grounds, we are not convinced that major treatment here is needed. The fact is that these schoolchildren get to school along the present roads, but there is a problem in connection with the railway bridge near Monkseaton Drive.

Dame Irene Ward: Of course, the children are not going to the grammar school, because it is not yet open.

Mr. Hay: That I understand. I am talking about the situation that has been put to us by the hon. Lady this morning and by the local council in correspondence. The position of the schoolchildren is simply that they would have to go along an unclassified road which does not at present carry a high volume of traffic, but where the road crosses the railway there is a bridge without a pavement. The suggestion has been made that a footbridge should be provided alongside the existing road bridge. This could be what is called technically a clip-on bridge—in other words, a footbridge built alongside and on the same level as the road bridge.
If the bridge is not too high, obviously the children who go to school by pedal cycle could carry their cycles up the steps of the bridge. If, however, it were found difficult, I have no doubt that the local council could arrange for the bridge to be so designed as to be


provided with ramps at either end. In any event, the provision of such a footbridge, its design and financing, is a matter for the local authorities concerned and not for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport. I must repeat that this is an unclassified road and we are not responsible for its maintenance.
One final point remains to be said, and that is why my right hon. Friend has refused the hon. Lady's request, reiterated on a number of occasions, that a senior official of the Ministry of Transport should make a special journey to Whitley Bay to discuss these safety proposals with her and other interested parties.
Our divisional road engineers are always willing to give what advice and assistance they can to the highway engineers of local authorities on technical matters, even if, as in this case, they relate to matters which are not the direct responsibility or concern of the Ministry of Transport. It would, however, be quite wrong, and it would probably be quite strongly resented, if the Ministry's officials, without being invited by the local authorities' engineers, interfered in these matters.
We always give advice only on two conditions. The first is that the local authorities request it and the second is Chat any correspondence, meetings or visits or matters of that kind are conducted solely between the Ministry and the local authority engineers. In other words, our engineers are quite ready to help their professional colleagues informally, but they try to keep aloof from local trouble. We have received no request for assistance from the borough engineer of Whitley Bay, nor do we expect to do so. We have no reason to doubt the competence of that engineer and if he is asked I have no doubt that the can advise my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth on the realities of the situation, particularly as regards the highways risks and dangers to children and traffic involved. My right hon. Friend is not prepared to instruct one of his senior engineers to visit Whitley Bay to play the part of arbitrator or in any other capacity unless invited by the local authority to do so.

Dame Irene Ward: I have the authority of Whitley Bay local authority

to say that it would like to bring a deputation to see my hon. Friend—or, I should say, the hon. Gentleman. I asked if the authority would like me to suggest a deputation and I was told that the members would be delighted. I think that would include the invitation from my local authority of the divisional road engineer.

Mr. Hay: I had not been apprised of 'that. The ingenuity of my hon. Friend knows no bounds. I can give her an undertaking this morning that I shall consider the suggestion mow made that a deputation should be received, but provided that it is understood that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport has at this moment no responsibility for settling this matter. I am prepared to give that undertaking.
One final word. With all respect to my hon. Friend, I hope that she will be a little less apt to accuse Ministers either of telling the House untruths at this Box or of telling her untruths in private. We have tried to play fair with the hon. Lady and to explain the situation. I have a mass of correspondence here. We have throughout tried to do our best to help her, but it does not assist the conduct of business if whenever a debate of this kind arises accusations of bad faith are made as between colleagues. We are trying to do what we can to help her and will go on doing our best. Beyond that I am afraid I cannot go this morning. I have tried to explain that we have no direct responsibility. If we had the situation would be different, but we have not and all that we can do is to use our good offices. That is what we are willing to do.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Martin Redmayne): rose in his place, and claimed to move, That the Question be now put: —

Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.

Sir Barnett Janner: Am I entitled to say a word—

Mr. Speaker: At the moment the hon. Member should not be on his feet.

Question put accordingly and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Orders of the Day — MR. PETER WARE

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. 1. Fraser.]

8.30 a.m.

Miss Alice Bacon (Leeds, South-East): I want to make a protest about what is happening at the present time. Some of my hon. Friends have been waiting here all night to raise points to which Ministers have been expecting to reply. I see, for instance, the Joint Undersecretary of State for the Home Department here—

Mr. Speaker: Order. There is some difficulty about this. I do not know quite to whom the protest is directed, but I cannot debate the matter of accepting the Closure Motion. I have no power to do it. I must leave the hon. Lady to her remedy.

Sir Barnett Janner: While I appreciate that we are guided by you, Mr. Speaker, surely we are in a position to debate the Closure, to debate whether it is appropriate or not at this time. I rather gathered—and this is what my hon. Friend was referring to—

Mr. Speaker: No. I think that the hon. Member, with due respect to him, is in some little confusion. There can be no opportunity to debate now in any form whether or not the Closure Motion should have been made and accepted. That would require quite different means. There is no opportunity to discuss that proposition now. We are consuming the time of the hon. Member who has the Adjournment.

Miss Bacon: This is a disgraceful move by the Government.

Sir B. Janner: May I seek your guidance on this matter, Mr. Speaker? By what means is it possible, when we have stayed here all night to raise matters of extreme importance to the country and to us all, for us to be protected against this kind of action by the Government? Is there any method at all—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I cannot let the hon. Member do this now. It is not fair to the hon. Member who has the Adjournment. If the hon. Member

chooses to put upon the Order Paper an appropriate Motion for the purpose, he can, but not now.

Miss Margaret Herbison: Further to the point of order. I should like your advice, Mr. Speaker, on how we can protect ourselves, particularly those of us who have stayed all night, and how we can protect our constituents, upon matters on which we wish to speak, particularly since the next day's business of the House has not been in jeopardy. It seems to me that the Government, by moving the Closure, have treated the House and our constituents with utter contempt.

Mr. Speaker: The fact is that the Closure has now happened, and it is not fair to the hon. Member who has the Adjournment to go on trying to discuss the matter now by irregular points of order.

Miss Bacon: May I ask your advice, Mr. Speaker? I think that you have just said that we could put a Motion on the Order Paper, but, as you will appreciate, the House is going into recess very shortly, and the matter which was to come next for debate was the pay of probation officers, upon which an Order will probably be laid during the Recess. Therefore, the House will have no opportunity whatsoever of discussing the matter. What can hon. Members do in these circumstances?

Mr. Speaker: I think that what happens is that I call Dr. King, whose time is being used up.

Miss Bacon: Disgraceful.

Miss Herbison: A real disgrace. It is what this Government always do.

8.38 a.m.

Dr. Horace King: The trade unionist whose case I wish to raise is employed at a Southampton factory, is a tool maker, President of the Southampton Trades Council, a man of good character. A trades union official writes to me of him:
I found him impeccable in character and tireless in"—

Sir B. Janner: On a point of order. This is an extremely serious matter, Mr. Speaker. I want to draw your attention


to this fact. I was intending to raise a matter last Monday, and I was requested by the Minister responsible to be good enough to leave it to this Monday. I have stayed here all might to air this matter and the Minister is here for the purpose of answering the debate. Surely there must be a rule by which this kind of thing cannot be allowed? I ask your guidance. What can we do about it?

Mr. Speaker: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will understand that I cannot discuss these matters on points of order now because we are consuming the time of the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King).

Dr. King: Mr. Ware is a Communist, and he openly campaigns for the Communist Party, and because he is a Communist he has been dismissed by his employers following representations by the Atomic Energy Authority, for which the Parliamentary Secretary is responsible. He has appealed to the Minister for Science, and his appeal has been turned down. It is true that he has been offered alternative employment in Reading, but his main roots, his home, his friends and his life are in Southampton, and he believes—and I believe with him—that it is wrong that he should have to leave his work in Southampton merely because he is a Communist.
The sacking of the man for being a Communist has called forth protests from his trade union, from the Trades Councils of Southampton of Totton and of the Mid-Southern Federation, and from the National Council of Civil Liberties, and I associate myself wholeheartedly with those protests. I loathe Mr. Ware's political opinions, but I fight for his right, as a free citizen in a free country, carrying out perfectly legal activities in his own spare time, not to be victimised for so doing by losing his job.
Let it be clear that I fully support the security procedures as laid down by successive Governments and especially as set out in the recent most enlightened of all documents on this matter, the Radcliffe Report. Free Britain has a right to defend herself against those who would destroy our freedom. Earl Attlee was right when he said, on 25th March, 1948:

There must be secrets of Government, particularly in relation to defence … and those secrets must be preserved.
But he went on:
There is no action being taken against opinion. … It is limited to excluding from secret work those who cannot be trusted."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 25th March, 1948; Vol. 448, c. 3421.]
It is, however, possible in the name of security, as Madame Roland found it was in the name of liberty, to commit crimes. Without security there can be no freedom, and without freedom there can be no security; and somewhere in between those two statements lies the delicate balance of truth, justice and right, and without the vigilance of Parliament security can easily degenerate into tyranny as liberty can easily become licence.
The Radcliffe Report rightly says:
The activities of the Communist Party in Britain are not of the same order as a threat to security. … It is not the policy of the party to give its members, open or secret, any encouragement to undertake espionage. …
The real task of security, says the Radcliffe Report, is to find not Communists, but Russian agents. These exist. They will not always be Communists. Indeed, I would imagine that the first step an agent would take if he is a Communist would be to tear up his party card.
But Mr. Ware openly flaunts his Communism. He fought against the Labour Party in the last municipal elections in Southampton. He does not hide his political creed. The factory in which he works has two parts. One is engaged on security work and one on ordinary non-security work; and Mr. Ware works in the non-security part. The security section is, rightly, guarded. Its security precautions have to satisfy the Atomic Energy Authority. Mr. Ware could not possibly enter this section. He has never tried to.
Indeed, the only comment that security made when his appeal was heard by a single civil servant seems to be that Mr. Ware eats lunch in the factory canteen where there are also workers from the security part having lunch. This seems to be almost a favourite gambit of security officers. Some years ago, when I protested in the House against the sacking of a girl from the Foreign Office because her husband


was a Communist, she was a waitress in a canteen, and M.I.5 has lurid visions of cloak and dagger activities taking place in works canteens.
But Mr. Ware is a trade unionist. If he were a spy seeking information from other members of his branch who work in the security part of the factory, he could get it at branch meetings or anywhere in Southampton if, indeed, anyone would give it to him. If once we extend security precautions outside a security job, where are we to stop? The logical extension of this is to place Mr. Ware in complete isolation, to ban the Communist Party and to drive it underground. If the security precautions at the security part of the factory are inadequate let the Government make the firm tighten them up. But there is no suggestion that this is the case.
When a man is faced with dismissal from Government office he has the right of appeal to the "three wise men"—the advisers. He has also the right, as Earl Attlee said in column 3423 in the debate of 25th March, 1948, to ask for people to speak for him. This used to be applied only to Government personnel and only when they deny that they are Communists. But the Privy Councillors' Report of 1956 said, in paragraph 31, that this appeal ought also to be the right not only of Government servants but of those employed by Government contractors.
Mr. Ware, on the other hand, was refused such a right of appeal. Instead, his case was heard by one man in secret. He was not allowed to have a friend with him and this, I would have thought, was an elementary right of a man facing dismissal for his political beliefs. He was refused even a copy of the record of the interview, and his union, the A.E.U. was also refused a copy.
All that was at stake at the interview was whether he had access to security information. The geography of the factory itself and its security arrangements are known. Why the secret trial? What was there in his examination a copy of which could not have been given to him or to his union without endangering the safety of Britain?
The Privy Councillors, in their 1956 Report, said:
It is also important to convince public opinion that the measures taken and the pro-

cedures in force will not be exercised unreasonably.
The Radcliffe Report confirmed this. It pointed out that
the free world must take risks which are the price of freedom and are part of the price we pay for having a social and political system which men want to defend.
The Report rightly boasts of
… the public tradition that an individual is entitled to a fair hearing in respect of any accusation entertained against him irrespective of political or public convenience.
I believe that all these considerations have been flouted in Mr. Ware's case. I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will mot seek to avoid responsibility by saying that it is the firm which has dismissed him. The sequence of events is dear. The Atomic Energy Authority informed the firm that Mr. Ware was a Communist and must not have access to secret information. The firm's immediate reaction was to take the safest possible step it could by sending him straight out of the factory and later telling him that he could not work there any more. The Minister has approved of this action, of which he was the prime mover.
The Labour Movement, of which I am proud to be a member, grew up through years of political victimisation, and, indeed, partly because of it. In the olden days men were sacked because they were militant trade unionists. I do not want to see that happen in this country again. Mr. Ware has already been dismissed once by the firm for selling Daily Worker raffle tickets in the factory, although other raffle tickets were openly sold. His union managed to get (him reinstated then.
Once we tolerate punishment of a man on alleged security grounds but really for opinions he has a legal right to hold, we are on a slipperly slope. There is no doubt that tirade unionists in Southampton believe this has happened to Mr. Ware. He is not in a security job. He has no access to security information. His political opinions are bad and dangerous but they have to be met by argument and reason and not by taking his job away. I say this, even knowing that if the Communists were in control they would have no hesitation in taking away the jobs or even the existence of those of whose political opinions they disapprove. Mr. Ware has a fine war record. He served in the


Royal Navy and helped to preserve the very freedom which we are debating now.
I realise that a free society has continually to decide the limits of toleration; how far we can give political freedom to those of the extreme Right or Left who would take it from us if they got into power. Recent abuses of freedom have brought this very much to our minds. We made an inroad into freedom when we gave the Government the right to dismiss untrustworthy Communists from security positions. We were right to do so. But the House has a duty to see that that right is not abused, that the men dismissed are, indeed, untrustworthy, and that they are, indeed, in security positions.
I believe that Parliament and the trade union movement must always be on guard against the abuse of power. It is because I believe that we are considering such an abuse that I urge the Minister to reinstate Mr. Ware in the job from which, I believe, he has been unnecessarily dismissed. It is because I believe that the Radcliffe Report is right when it says that the central threat to British security lies further back than the British Communist Party that I urge the Minister to see that his Department avoids the public disquiet and sense of injustice which have undoubtedly been aroused over this case and which can handicap his Department in its real work, that of achieving security for British defence and for our free way of life.

8.47 a.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary for Science (Mr. Denzil Freeth): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) for giving me sufficient time in which to reply to the case which he has so eloquently put forward with such devotion to the interests of his constituent, after sitting up all night to do so.
I think that we are agreed about the salient points of this case, namely, that Mr. Ware was employed for just over two years by a firm in Southampton which does secret work for the Atomic Energy Authority, and that he was employed in that part of the factory where no secret work was carried on. I must, however.

emphasise that the nature of the secret work at this factory has changed recently.
I am not able to reveal to the hon. Gentleman the character of the change, or the additional security precautions which it became necessary to introduce, but I assure him that it was as a result of these changes that the Atomic Energy Authority sent the letter of 28th May to Mr. Ware explaining the policy of the Government in security matters, informing him of the provisional notice to the company, and outlining to him the steps he could take to appeal either to the independent tribunal known as the "Three Advisers", or to the Minister, or to both. Mr. Ware appealed to my noble Friend.
The hon. Gentleman touched on Earl Attlee's statement of 15th March, 1948, which set out the principles on which the Government's attitude to security is still based. It is, to paraphrase Earl Attlee's words, that Communists should not be permitted to be associated with secret work, since there is no way of distinguishing between a member of the Communist Party whose loyalty to this country is assured, and another member of the Communist Party whose loyalty is not. The Atomic Energy Authority is, by ministerial direction, in exactly the same position as a Government Department.
When it has to let a contract for work to be done outside its own stations it follows the security procedures outlined in the White Paper, Cmnd. 1681, issued earlier this year. Where a contractor undertakes such work for the Authority he must also undertake to effect certain measures set out in detail in a security clause, itself included as a standard condition in all Government contracts which have a classified content. This clause provides for the exclusion from access to classified information of any person who does not need such access for the proper performance of the contract or whom the Authority has required to be excluded. It gives the Authority the right to be supplied with full particulars of all persons who might have access to classified information, to inspect the security arrangements of the firm in question, to control the placing of subcontracts, and so on. Any failure to carry out these security requirements gives the Authority the right to terminate the contract.
This provision in the standard clause means that if the Authority has reason to suppose that someone who might have access to secret information is a Communist, or has Communist sympathies to such an extent as to raise legitimate doubts as to his reliability, the Authority is entitled, under the contract with the firm, to name that person, and to give notice to the firm that that person should not have access to, or be in a position to have access to, any secret information. That notice of the Authority to the firm is only provisional, and is subject to confirmation or annulment by my noble Friend. But that is the only judicial function which my noble Friend possesses in such cases.
I now revert to the case of Mr. Ware. The arrangements at the firm in question for segregating the classified area from the unclassified area were wholly satisfactory during the period after Mr. Ware joined the firm, and the Authority was satisfied that it was possible for the classified work, and the information upon which it depended, to be strictly confined to that section of the factory. In course of time, however, as I said earlier, the nature of the secret work changed, and it became necessary to review the arrangements.
It was in these circumstances that the Authority felt bound to give provisional notice under the terms of its contract that there must be no disclosure of secret matters to Mr. Ware. It was because the company did not consider that it was able to guarantee that Mr. Ware, working in the non-secret part of the factory, would not be able to obtain knowledge of the secret work being carried out in the classified area, that it gave provisional notice to him and suspended him on full pay, pending consideration of any representations which he might make.
Let us take the two methods of appeal open to Mr. Ware. One was to write to the three advisers, and Mr. Ware, on 8th July, wrote to my noble Friend stating that he now felt disposed to make an appeal to the three advisers. But I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that this course would have been inappropriate in Mr. Ware's case, since the duty of the three advisers would be limited to advising the Minister whether there were reasonable grounds for supposing that

Mr. Ware had, in fact, Communist sympathies—and this Mr. Ware has never denied, as he is a member of the Communist Party.
Therefore, the terms of reference of the three advisers, which were given to the House on 29th January, 1957, made any appeal by Mr. Ware to them inappropriate. However, Mr. Ware appealed to my noble Friend and, in accordance with normal procedure, on 22nd June he was seen by a senior civil servant appointed by my noble Friend to hear his case. The fact that he was asked to come alone is accounted for by the fact that things might be said at the interview which it was not right and proper for a third person to hear.
At the interview Mr. Ware made a very full and frank statement, his main contention being that no work involving security took place in that section of the factory where he was employed, and that he had no connection at all with the secret work being carried on in the classified area. He maintained that the company had always been within the terms of the contract, and that it was so still.
My noble Friend considered with great care the representations Mr. Wade made. He had, however, to take into account four basic facts. First, Mr. Ware has never disputed that he is a member of the Communist Party—and I agree with all the hon. Member said about his open and honourable conduct in this matter. Secondly, it is Government policy, and has been the policy of successive Governments since 1948, that Communists should not be employed either on secret work or in connection with secret work.
The third basic fact is that Mr. Ware's employers are required by the terms of their contract with the Authority to ensure that any person named by the Authority, as Mr. Ware was, is not in a position to acquire any information about the secret work being carried on at the Southampton factory. If the firm cannot ensure this, it is liable to have its contract ended by the Authority. Fourthly, the company had stated that it was not able to guarantee that any parson employed in the non-secret part of the factory would not be able to obtain some knowledge of the secret work in the classified area.
It was not for my noble Friend to decide whether or not the firm was right in maintaining this position, namely, that it was impossible to ensure that a person employed in the non-secret pant of the factory could not obtain some knowledge of the secret work. That must be a matter for the firm to decide and this principle was stated by the former Lord Chancellor in another place on 21st June, 1956, when he said:
…it is for the firm to decide whether a man can be employed on other work or must be dismissed."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 21st June, 1956; Vol. 197, c. 1267–8.]
I think that it is worth pointing out that the firm did offer Mr. Ware alternative employment at its Reading factory and that it has been as generous as it could be. I understand the reasons why Mr. Ware did not want to go to Reading, but I think it worth putting on record that in addition to the customary week's pay in lieu of notice he was given a further sum equivalent to two weeks' pay.
My noble Friend considered all the facts which I have set out, but he came to the conclusion that the Atomic Energy Authority had acted scrupulously in accordance with security procedure as laid down, and that the Authority had not been actuated by malice towards Mr. Ware. The incident of the Daily Worker raffle tickets had nothing whatever to do with the case. On the facts as stated he came to what is, to my mind, the inescapable conclusion that the Authority was absolutely right in declaring that Mr. Ware was a Communist, which he admitted, and in demanding, in view of the nature of the work in the secret part of the factory, that the firm should guarantee to it that nobody working in the secret part could obtain any information about the work carried on in the classified area. Therefore, he upheld the decision of the Authority.
I would emphasise that my noble Friend was not required, indeed he was not empowered to sit in judgment on the decision of the firm that it could only give effect to the notice by the Authority by dismissing Mr. Ware or offering him employment elsewhere. As the former Lord Chancellor said in

another place in the debate to which I have already referred:
No man has a right to know his country's secrets; and in pursuance of their responsibility for the nation's safety, the Government are within their rights in requiring him to be denied access to them."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, House of Lords, 21st June, 1956; Vol 197, c. 1261.1
I know that the hon. Member will agree that the foremost consideration must be the safeguarding of the national security. I fully agree that it is wholly regrettable that from time to time this causes hardship to the individual. But this is a case where there is no malice towards Mr. Ware. It was purely a question of whether it could be guaranteed that he would not have access to confidential information in the job in which he was working until recently. I am perfectly certain that to maintain a state of security must be the first duty of the Government and it was with this end alone in view that the actions of the Atomic Energy Authority were taken as was also my noble Friend's decision to uphold those actions.

Orders of the Day — WORLD SECURITY AUTHORITY

8.59 a.m.

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: The House is grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Dr. King) for raising this question of security and I am particularly grateful as it enables me also to raise a question of security.
The initiative was taken at the last Prime Ministers' conference, where a most remarkable statement was made to the effect—and in this Her Majesty's Government had the agreement of every Prime Minister of the Commonwealth— that peace in the world could not be maintained unless there was a world security authority backing world law and with world courts and a world force. My complaint is that nothing has been done by Her Majesty's Government since—

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Monday evening and the debate having continued for half-an-hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House, without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned accordingly at Nine o'clock a.m.